Mickey Lolich, hero of the 1968 World Series for the Detroit Tigers, dies at 85

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.

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)

ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia General Assembly ended its annual session early Friday without a plan for new equipment to overhaul the state's voting system by a July deadline, plunging into doubt the future of elections in the political battleground.

The lawmakers' failure to offer a solution after months of debate raises uncertainty about how Georgians will vote in November and leaves confusion that could end in the courts or a special legislative session.

“They’ve abdicated their responsibility,” Democratic state Rep. Saira Draper said of inaction by Republicans who control the legislature.

Currently, voters make their choices on Dominion Voting machines, which then print ballots with a QR code that scanners read to tally votes. Those machines have been repeatedly targeted by President Donald Trump following his 2020 election loss, and Trump’s Georgia supporters responded by enacting a law in 2024 that bans using barcodes to count votes.

But state law still requires counties to use the machines. No money has been allocated to reprogram them, and lawmakers failed to agree on a replacement.

“We’ll have an unresolvable statutory conflict come July 1,” said House Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Victor Anderson, a Cornelia Republican who backed a proposal to keep using the machines in 2026 that Senate Republicans declined to consider.

Republican House Speaker Jon Burns said he would meet with Gov. Brian Kemp and “take his temperature” on the possibility of a special session.

Kemp spokesperson Carter Chapman said he Republican governor will examine the situation.

“We’ll analyze all bills, as well as the consequence of those that did not pass,” Chapman said Friday.

House Republicans and Democrats backed Anderson's plan, which would have required that Georgia choose a voting process that didn't use QR codes by 2028. Election officials preferred that solution.

“The Senate has shown that they’re not responsible actors,” Draper said. She added that Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Trump-endorsed Republican running for governor, seemed more interested in keeping Trump's backing than “doing right by Georgia voters.”

A spokesperson for Jones didn't immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday.

Joseph Kirk, Bartow County election supervisor and president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, said he’ll look to the secretary of state for guidance and assumes a judge will rule to instruct election officials how to proceed.

“This is uncharted territory,” he said.

Robert Sinners, a spokesperson for Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is also running for governor, said officials are “ready to follow the law and follow the Constitution.”

Burns told reporters that his chamber was seeking to minimize changes this year.

“You can’t change horses in the middle of the stream,” Burns said.

Anderson said without action, the state could be required to use hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots in November.

Election officials say switching to a new system within just a few months, as advocated by some Republicans, would be nearly impossible.

“They made no way for this to happen except putting a deadline on it," Cherokee County elections director Anne Dover said of the switch away from barcodes. Dover said one problem under some plans is that a very large number of ballots would have to be printed.

Lawmakers seemed more concerned about scoring political points than making practical plans, Paulding County Election Supervisor Deidre Holden said.

“If anyone is resilient and can get the job done, it’s all of us election officials, but the legislators need to work with us, and they need to understand what we do before they go making laws that are basically unachievable for us,” Holden said.

Supporters of hand-marked paper ballots say voters are more likely to trust in an accurate count if they can see what gets read by the scanner.

Right-wing election activists lobbied lawmakers for an immediate switch to hand-marked paper ballots, but the House turned away from a Senate proposal to do so.

Anderson said he wasn’t sure if a special session could escape those political crosswinds, but said Georgia lawmakers must fix the problem.

“This is a legislative problem,” Anderson said. “It’s a legislative solution that has to happen.”

FILE - Voting machines are seen at the Bartow County Election office, Jan. 25, 2024, in Cartersville, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)