July Forth

It’s part of baseball’s wonderful congruity.

The season, all 162 games of it, is neatly divvied up into six full months: April to September, with October reserved for the three tiers of playoffs. An All-Star game placed almost squarely in the middle, a genuine halfway mark.

And Independence Day close enough to that halfway point. July 4th – George Steinbrenner’s birthday, as well. Insert your own joke.

It’s another of baseball’s many adages that says the teams that are leading their divisions on July 4th are the ones that are likely to be leading them when the curtain falls after game #162. It should be noted that what baseball calls adages, some folks call urban legends. Or myths.

Thanks to the most wonderful website on the planet Earth, Retrosheet.org, I did a little research. And I found myth and truth to both be attributed to the July 4th litmus test.

Starting with 1940, the Tigers have won league and/or divisional titles seven times (1940, 1945, 1968, 1972, 1984, 1987, and 2006). It was a simple matter to look up the July 4th standings for each season.

1940. The Tigers find themselves in second place, a game behind the Cleveland Indians. And the two teams would trade first place all summer, before the Tigers nipped the Tribe at the end by one game.

1945. The Tigers reside in first place on the 4th, three-and-a-half games in front of the vaunted Yankees. They capture the flag by 1 ½ games over the Washington Senators.

1968. There’s no catching Mayo Smith’s boys. A bulging 8 ½ game lead over Cleveland. They roll to the pennant.

1972. A tight, four-team race at the end. On July 4, the Tigers are in second place, one game behind Baltimore. At the end, the Tigers finish one-half game in front of Boston, thanks to a games-played disparity caused by the players’ strike in spring training.

1984. Bless You Boys! A 35-5 start, and the Tigers are a comfy seven games in front of Toronto on the 4th. They win the division by a whopping 15 games.

1987. The team that came back from an 11-19 start. On the 4th the Tigers are in third place, six games behind New York, and Toronto a game ahead of them in second place. The Tigers erase a 3 ½ game deficit in the season’s final week to win the division by two games.

2006. The improbable season finds the Tigers in first place on Independence Day, 1 ½ games ahead of Chicago. The Minnesota Twins are nine games behind. The Twins win the division on the season’s final day. But the Tigers grab the life preserver, a.k.a. the Wild Card.

The final tally? Of the seven flag seasons, four times the Tigers were in first place on the 4th. Twice they were in second. Once they were in third. Four of seven – good enough to win a playoff series, but not good enough to prove the adage. But mediocre enough to lend it myth-like status.

More research would have dug up how many times the Tigers were in first place on July 4, but failed to win the enchilada. More proof against the adage.

In 2007, the Tigers find themselves in what should be a whale of a battle to the wire. The pesky Indians and the ever-dangerous Twins will most likely join the Detroiters in a three-team volley that might have us talking about the “Great Race of 2007” for years. There are still old-timers who would corner you and yap about the four-team mad rush to the AL pennant in 1967. The Tigers lost out to the Red Sox on the final two outs of the season, thanks to Dick McAuliffe’s only grounding-into-double play all season, against the Angels. (The Tigers were in third place on the 4th that year, 3 ½ games behind first-place Chicago, another adage buster).

Friday night, the Twins spanked Justin Verlander and the Tigers all over Comerica Park, 11-1. It was a demolition usually reserved for the Tigers’ opponents. And it served notice – and a ghastly reminder of 2006 – that the Twins are fully expected to be involved in the party until the wee hours of October.

The Tigers might be in first place this July 4th. Or they might not. The Indians have been denizens of first place this season, forging a 4 ½ game lead on June 1. Then the Tigers whittled it down to two games, then one – then they wrestled the lead away from Cleveland like a bully. The Tigers edged ahead by two games. The Indians, in two quick nights last week, caught them. It’s marvelous baseball theater, and it will be here for an extended run. Enjoy it.

I’m not sure what prompted the baseball folks to target July 4th as some sort of watershed moment in any given season. But they did. And for decades, the leader at the “Independence Day Turn” has been foolishly pre-crowned as victor. Yet still the adage lives, though left staggered year after year.

The team that leads the division on the Fourth of July will most likely be the team left standing at the end of the season.

Or something like that.

Back to Steinbrenner. His Yankees, on the boss’s birthday in 1978, were nine games behind the Red Sox. A month prior, the deficit was 14 games. But at the end of the season, the Red Sox were not the team left standing. They were slumped in defeat, losers of a one-game playoff for the division. To the Yankees. Gag.

If the Tigers are in first place come this July 4th, we’ll be happy, because of the adage. If they’re not, we’ll dismiss it as so much bunk. A myth. A baseballian urban legend.

So we cannot be wrong. Only the standings can be, at the end.