DETROIT (AP) — Mickey Lolich, who earned three complete-game wins for the Detroit Tigers in the 1968 World Series, the last Major League Baseball pitcher to accomplish that feat, died Wednesday. He was 85.
The Tigers said Lolich's wife told them he died after a short stay in hospice care. An exact cause of death was not provided.
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FILE- In this Oct. 10, 1968, file photo, Detroit Tigers Pitcher Mickey Lolich he pours bottle of champagne on his head in clubhouse after defeating the St. Louis Cardinals 4-1 in Game 7 of baseball's World Series in 1968. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - Former Detroit Tigers pitcher Mickey Lolich throws out the ceremonial first pitch before a baseball game between the Tigers and the Pittsburgh Pirates, March 30, 2018, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)
FILE - In this Oct. 3, 1968, file photo, Mickey Lolich of the Detroit Tigers is shown pitching during the second game of the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - Mickey Lolich, pitcher of Detroit Tigers poses for a photo, March 1968. (AP Photo, File)
Detroit Tigers catcher Bill Freehan and pitcher Mickey Lolich off his feet as he screams with joy, after defeating the St. Louis Cardinals 4-1 in the final game of the World Series on Wednesday, Oct. 10, 1968 at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Joining the celebration is Norm Cash (25). Lolich became the twelfth pitcher to win three games in the World Series. (AP Photo)
Denny McLain was the star of Detroit’s pitching staff in 1968, winning 31 regular-season games. Lolich, however, was the Most Valuable Player of the Series, with a 1.67 ERA and a Game 7 victory on the road over Bob Gibson and the St. Louis Cardinals.
Bill Freehan threw off his catcher’s mask and caught a foul popup by Tim McCarver for the final out. Lolich jumped into Freehan’s arms — an iconic image of Detroit’s championship season.
“It was always somebody else,” Lolich told the Detroit Free Press in 2018, “but my day had finally come.”
He is No. 23 in career strikeouts with 2,832, ahead of many others who, unlike Lolich, are in the Hall of Fame, and fifth among all lefties, according to baseball-reference.com.
Lolich was an unlikely hero in 1968. During a reunion of the World Series team, he recalled how manager Mayo Smith had sent him to the bullpen for much of August. Lolich returned to the Tigers' starting rotation and went 6-1 in the final weeks.
“I was having a few problems, but I had been a starting pitcher ever since 1964,” said Lolich, who was upset about the bullpen move. “I remember telling him, ‘If we win this thing this year it’s going to be because of me.’ But I was only talking about the season. I wasn’t talking about the World Series.
“I got my revenge back in the World Series,” he said.
Lolich pitched Game 7 after only two days of rest. He figured he would get a Corvette from General Motors for being the Series MVP but had to settle for a Dodge Charger GT because Chrysler was the sponsor in 1968.
“Nothing against Chargers, nothing at all,” Lolich said in his book, “Joy in Tigertown.” “It’s just that I already had two of them in my driveway.”
Since Lolich, only two pitchers have won three games in a single World Series: Arizona’s Randy Johnson in 2001 and Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2025. But they pitched fewer innings and got their third victories in relief.
Lolich had a record of 220-192, including the postseason, over a 16-year career, all but three with Detroit. He left baseball for a bit after playing for the New York Mets in 1976 but returned with San Diego in 1978-79.
The left-hander was 25-14 in 1971, striking out 308 batters over 376 innings and finishing second in AL Cy Young Award voting. He followed that up with a 22-14 record and 250 strikeouts in 1972.
In a statement, the Tigers expressed condolences to Lolich's family and said his legacy “will forever be cherished.”
After his baseball career, Lolich, a native of Portland, Oregon, was in the doughnut business in the Detroit suburbs, making and selling them for 18 years.
“I doubt any other ballplayer has ever made that transition — from the diamond to doughnuts. But I did,” he wrote in his book.
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FILE- In this Oct. 10, 1968, file photo, Detroit Tigers Pitcher Mickey Lolich he pours bottle of champagne on his head in clubhouse after defeating the St. Louis Cardinals 4-1 in Game 7 of baseball's World Series in 1968. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - Former Detroit Tigers pitcher Mickey Lolich throws out the ceremonial first pitch before a baseball game between the Tigers and the Pittsburgh Pirates, March 30, 2018, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)
FILE - In this Oct. 3, 1968, file photo, Mickey Lolich of the Detroit Tigers is shown pitching during the second game of the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - Mickey Lolich, pitcher of Detroit Tigers poses for a photo, March 1968. (AP Photo, File)
Detroit Tigers catcher Bill Freehan and pitcher Mickey Lolich off his feet as he screams with joy, after defeating the St. Louis Cardinals 4-1 in the final game of the World Series on Wednesday, Oct. 10, 1968 at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Joining the celebration is Norm Cash (25). Lolich became the twelfth pitcher to win three games in the World Series. (AP Photo)
The Supreme Court on Tuesday will rule on the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s order on birthright citizenship declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.
The decision comes on the final day of a Supreme Court term that has centered on Trump’s expansive claims of presidential power — and largely ruled in his favor.
The court on Monday handed Trump a major win by upholding his firings of independent federal agency heads at will, with the exception of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, who will retain her job while she fights the president’s effort to fire her over allegations of mortgage fraud.
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The ruling is another setback for transgender people.
The court’s conservative majority, which has repeatedly ruled against transgender Americans in the past year, ruled that state bans in Idaho and West Virginia don’t violate the Constitution or the federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education.
More than two dozen other Republican-led states have adopted bans on female transgender athletes, and the decision seems certain to extend to them as well.
Left unresolved by the outcome are lawsuits challenging state laws and regulations in Connecticut, California and elsewhere that permit transgender athletes to compete consistent with their gender identity.
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The justices are weighing Trump’s appeal of a lower-court ruling from New Hampshire that struck down the citizenship restrictions, one of several courts that have blocked them.
Trump signed the birthright citizenship order on the first day of his second term, but the restrictions have not taken effect anywhere in the country.
In oral arguments, Sauer, the lawyer for Trump’s administration, said that birthright citizenship encourages illegal immigration and “rewards illegal aliens who not only violate the immigration laws but also jump in front of those who follow the rules.”
The practice “demeans the priceless and profound gift of American citizenship,” he told the court.
But the American Civil Liberties Union, which is challenging Trump’s order, sees it very differently.
“It’s one of the clearest statements of who we are as a country,” the ACLU said in a statement. “No matter who your parents are, if you’re born here, you belong here.”
Most Americans say they believe in birthright citizenship, though many are conflicted about exactly who it should apply to.
An April survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research of more than 2,500 U.S. adults found that about two-thirds say children born in the U.S. should get automatic citizenship. That number drops to 44% for Republicans.
But the poll also showed ambivalence when it came to specifics.
For example, 75% of U.S. adults support automatic citizenship for children born in the U.S. to parents in the country on work visas. Only about half, though, believe in it for children born to parents who are illegally in the country.
The 5-4 decision rejected a Republican-led attack on laws in more than half the states and the District of Columbia that permit mailed ballots to arrive and be counted some number of days after the election, provided they are postmarked by Election Day.
The outcome spares officials the headache of changing their ballot rules just a few months before the 2026 midterm congressional elections.
In just over half of those states, the more forgiving deadlines apply only to ballots cast by military and overseas voters.
During oral arguments, even many conservative justices appeared unconvinced by the government’s case.
“I can imagine it being messy in some applications,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, asking Solicitor General D. John Sauer about the issue of abandoned infants.
“What if you don’t know who the parents are?” she asked.
Sauer started to say that question was addressed in the U.S. code, but Barrett quickly interrupted him.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but what about the Constitution?” she asked.
Outside of the Americas, most countries follow the legal principle of jus sanguinis, or “right of blood,” with a child’s citizenship inherited from its parents, no matter the place of birth.
In the European Union, for example, no member states grant automatic, unconditional citizenship to children born to foreigners.
But American legal practice is descended in many ways from English common law, which had long provided for citizenship based on a child’s place of birth, the legal concept of jus soli, or “right of soil.”
The UK, though, abandoned jus soli with the British Nationality Act of 1981.
Under the new rules, people born in the UK get citizenship only if at least one parent is a British citizen or has “settled status” under the law.
The court will dive right into the remaining decisions when the justices take the bench at 10 a.m. ET.
The opinions are typically read in ascending order of seniority so that the most junior justice with an opinion goes first. Chief Justice John Roberts, who may well have the decision in the birthright citizenship case, would go last.
Other than at the Federal Reserve, with its role of setting interest rates, the court held that presidents have free rein to fire agency heads at will, despite federal laws that require a cause for such dismissals and a 91-year-old decision that had limited executive authority.
The justices allowed Fed governor Lisa Cook to stay in her job while she fights Trump’s effort to fire her over allegations of mortgage fraud, which she has denied.
With the six conservative justices in the majority, the nine-member court jettisoned its unanimous decision in Humphrey’s Executor that had limited when presidents can fire agencies’ board members — in part to try to ensure decision-making free of political influence.
“We hold that such protection from removal is contrary to the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.
In separate cases, the court will also decide:
Whether states can prohibit transgender athletes from playing on girls’ and women’s public school and college teams.
Whether to uphold a federal law more than 50 years old limiting how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates for Congress and the president.
Oral arguments for the case lasted more than two hours in a crowded courtroom that included Trump, the first sitting president to attend arguments at the nation’s highest court, and, in seats reserved for the justices’ guests, actor Robert De Niro.
Trump heard his administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, Solicitor General D. John Sauer, face one skeptical question after another. Justices asked about the legal basis for the order and voiced more practical concerns.
“Is this happening in the delivery room?” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked, drilling down into the logistics of how the government would actually figure out who is entitled to citizenship and who is not.
Chief Justice John Roberts suggested that Sauer was relying on quirky exceptions to citizenship to make a broad argument about people who are in the country illegally. “I’m not quite sure how you can get to that big group from such tiny and sort of idiosyncratic examples,” Roberts said.
Justice Clarence Thomas sounded the most likely among the nine justices to side with Trump.
The U.S. Supreme Court is seen Monday, June 29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
The U.S. Supreme Court is seen Monday, June 29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
