57 years later, Detroit Tigers signee will throw out first pitch

Carlos Monarrez | Detroit Free Press

If Louis Patler hadn’t hurt his right knee shortly after the Detroit Tigers signed him to a contract in 1961 out of Hollywood High School in Los Angeles, who knows what would have happened? Patler had a big arm and, at least for a couple of months, equally big dreams.

But two weeks after graduation, Patler suffered a serious knee injury playing basketball and the Tigers quickly gave up on him. In the predraft era, the Tigers basically offered Patler a tryout contract they could easily rescind without compensation.

Patler was disillusioned. He turned his back on baseball. He couldn’t bear to think of the sport and the opportunity of a lifetime he had missed.

“I was so heartbroken,” Patler said, “I literally didn’t touch a hardball for at least 10 years.”

Patler decided to turn toward his studies. He eventually made it to Detroit, earning a Ph.D. in sociology at Wayne State in 1972. He became a best-selling author who has written five books and is also a business consultant. In 2017, he spoke at Wayne State’s commencement.

On Tuesday night at Comerica Park, the story comes full circle. That’s when Patler, 74, will throw out ceremonial first pitch before the Tigers’ game against the Oakland Athletics.

“I got the biggest smile on my face,” Patler said of his reaction to being told he would throw out the first pitch. “I was like a little kid. Like, how could this happen?

“You know, there’s some things you can put on a bucket list and some things you would not even imagine to do so because it’s totally out of your control. So this wasn’t even a bucket-list type thing. It’s more like the proverbial dream come true.”

Patler will get his chance to take the mound because of a meeting he had with executives of The Henry Ford while he was in Detroit teaching a class at Wayne State in May. The museum is sponsoring Tuesday’s game and last week invited Patler to throw out the first pitch.

Here’s the interesting thing about Patler’s first pitch. He actually wants to throw it from the mound at the regulation distance of 60 feet, 6 inches. He wants to throw his pitch from the same distance former Tiger Justin Verlander and current Tiger Jordan Zimmermann throw their pitches for one simple reason: Because he does it all the time as a five-time World Series champion in the Men’s Senior Baseball League, a national amateur league for adults.

Even though Patler and baseball were broken up for a decade, they never went through with the divorce.

The ultimate reconciliation came in 1998. Patler had moved to California’s Bay Area and he read an article about the MSBL in his hometown paper, the San Francisco Chronicle. That fall, Patler won the first of his World Series titles. He was 55, and after nearly four decades, he was playing baseball again.

Patler had tried softball and remained tied to baseball through Little League — this is his 32nd year coaching. But he realized he missed the demands of playing baseball.

“From the time of the tryouts, even to the present,” Patler said, “the level of play of hardball, the skill level, the knowledge of the game, the love of the game, knowing all the unwritten rules of the game, it’s so different from hardball to softball. … I just felt so at home so quickly, I never turned back. And I haven’t touched a softball since then.”

Patler started off playing third base and shortstop and eventually moved to pitcher. He says he throws junk and occasionally shows a fastball that can touch 70 miles per hour. But Patler has no illusion about his skill level.

“Coach,” one of his Little Leaguers recently observed, “you guys play really good baseball — slowly.”

Patler never became a star on the diamond. But on Tuesday night, he’ll finally get a chance to shine, if only for a brief moment, on the mound for the Tigers.

Contact Carlos Monarrez at cmonarrez@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.