Fat Man on the Mound

What has a pot belly, rides eight motorcycles and does nothing with its left arm but throw bullets? The answer: 6-ft. 1-in., 207-lb. Mickey Lolich, left-handed mound ace of the Detroit Tigers. Mickey explains the pot easily. "Big bellies run in my family. All the male Lolichs have them." The cycle fetish and the sinistral fastball derive from a childhood accident. When Lolich was a lad of three in Portland, Ore., his tricycle collided with a motorcycle, which crushed his left shoulder. Although the shoulder healed properly, the doctor gave Mickey throwing exercises to strengthen his arm. The exercises worked so well that now, at 31, Lolich is baseball's premier lefthanded hurler. As for the bikes: "My mother hated motorcycles, so naturally I had to have one."

Lolich grew up contrary, but if he had not, baseball might well have made him so. For nine years he has been one of the game's outstanding pitchers. But like Lou Gehrig, who labored first in the shadow of Babe Ruth and then Joe DiMaggio, Lolich has usually seemed to be second best. He had the initial misfortune of being teamed with the Peck's Bad Boy of baseball, Denny McLain. The outstanding performance of Lolich's career--three World Series victories over the St. Louis Cardinals in 1968 --was virtually lost in the glare of McLain's 31 victories that season. In 1971, Lolich won 25 games and struck out 308 batters, tops in either league. He also pitched 376 innings (the most by a major league hurler in 55 years) and threw 29 complete games (the most by an American League pitcher since 1946). So who won the 1971 Cy Young Award as the league's outstanding pitcher? Oakland's highly publicized Vida Blue.

All of which has understandably nettled Lolich. On the eve of McLain's 30th victory in 1968, Mickey posted a sign in the Tiger clubhouse: ATTENTION WRITERS: THIS WAY TO MCLAIN'S LOCKER. As for the Cy Young Award, Lolich has gone so far as to devise a complex scoring system of his own based on the number of starts, victories, strikeouts, etc. As he points out: "The award, then, wouldn't be based on whim. Of course, the baseball writers aren't about to give up their right to be supreme judges."

Apart from his occasional feeling of neglect, Lolich is a convivial, freewheeling sort. To the dismay of his wife and Tiger Manager Billy Martin, he often rides a motorcycle 28 miles to work from his home in the Detroit suburb of Washington. Last year, when for the first time in his career he won his 20th game, Lolich sprung for six bottles of champagne for his teammates. This season, the honors that have long eluded him are in view. McLain is in the minors, and Blue, after a lengthy holdout, has yet to win a game. Meanwhile, Lolich is bewildering American League batsmen with a repertory of pitches that now includes a "cut fastball," a slider and a hard sinker. His victory over the California Angels last week made him the second pitcher this season to win nine games and left the Tigers a comfortable four games ahead of the Baltimore Orioles in the league's East Division.

Still, Lolich is well aware that he will never be a matinee idol. "I guess you could say I'm the redemption of the fat man," he cheerfully observes. "A guy will be watching me on TV and see that I don't look in any better shape than he is. 'Hey, Maude,' he'll holler. 'Get a load of this guy. And he's a 20-game winner.' "

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