June 17, 1970: Light-hitting Ken Szotkiewicz socks game-winning home run for Tigers

“Sock” and “Socko” were nicknames given to Ken Szotkiewicz, but they weren’t tributes to his hitting skill.1 In 98 plate appearances with the 1970 Detroit Tigers, shortstop Szotkiewicz hit just .107. If he’d come to the plate twice more without a hit, he would have posted the lowest career batting average of any twentieth-century position player with at least 100 plate appearances.2

All the more reason for Szotkiewicz to savor the events of June 17, 1970. His three-run home run off eventual American League ERA leader Diego Seguí3 gave the Tigers the lead in a 9-7 win over the Oakland Athletics. Szotkiewicz’s shot helped Detroit overcome six fielding errors on a rain-soaked night.4

The Wednesday night game was the finale of a three-game set; the teams split the first two. The Tigers, World Series champions two seasons earlier, entered the day in third place in the American League East Division with a 30-28 record, 7½ games behind the eventual champion Baltimore Orioles.

Mayo Smith’s club got off to a good start, then slumped, with a 12-6 record in April followed by a 9-17 ledger in May. Part of their trouble stemmed from the loss of ace pitcher Denny McLain, who’d won 55 games over the prior two seasons but was suspended for the first half of 1970 following an investigation into his connections with bookmakers.5

Shortstop had been a weak spot in the Tigers’ lineup. Their starter coming out of spring training, César Gutiérrez, was hitting just .211. His on-base percentage of .246 was the lowest among qualifying AL batters, while his slugging average of .275 was fourth-lowest. On June 15, Smith benched him. Hitting coach Wally Moses explained that Gutiérrez had been “pressing,” adding, “This will take the pressure off and let him get straightened out.”6

An opportunity opened for 23-year-old Szotkiewicz, who had unexpectedly beaten out veteran Tom Tresh and prospect Tim Marting for the backup shortstop job in spring training. Szotkiewicz hit just .147 at Class A in 1968 after signing with the Tigers out of Georgia Southern University, then hit .232 between Classes A and Double A in 1969.7 His fielding talent, combined with hours of spring practice with Moses, convinced the Tigers to take a chance on him.8 Szotkiewicz entered the June 17 game hitting .135 in 22 games, 11 of them starts. His five hits included a homer off Minnesota’s Dave Boswell on May 6.

John McNamara’s Athletics were the Tigers’ opposite in the early going: They’d been below .500 in April (8-12), then bounced back with a strong May (17-11). They entered the game in third place in the AL West with a 34-28 record, seven games behind the eventual division champion Minnesota Twins.

McNamara’s starter, right-hander Catfish Hunter, entered with a 10-5 record and a 3.04 ERA. He’d won his previous three starts, though he’d given up five earned runs in 5⅓ innings against Baltimore in his most recent outing. The 1970 season was Hunter’s sixth in the majors and his first with a winning record (18-14). He followed it with five straight 20-win seasons, putting him on course for a place in the Hall of Fame.9

Opposing Hunter was lefty Les Cain, in his first full major-league season.10 Cain had a 5-2 record and a 4.05 ERA. In Cain’s previous start against the California Angels on June 13, the Tigers made three errors behind him, two by Gutiérrez. Cain allowed four runs in seven innings, all unearned.

After a 40-minute rain delay, the Athletics tagged Cain for an earned run in the first in front of 12,541 fans. Bert Campaneris, on his way to leading the AL with 42 stolen bases, worked a leadoff walk, then stole second and third. Joe Rudi and Reggie Jackson couldn’t drive him in: Rudi struck out, while Jackson was picked off first after drawing another walk. Sal Bando collected the RBI with a single to deep short.11

Hunter issued only a walk to Al Kaline in the first, but lost effectiveness in the second. Jim Northrup and Bill Freehan singled; Ike Brown’s double into the left-field corner scored both.12 Szotkiewicz drew a walk. Cain bunted, and the Athletics went for the force at third, but Brown’s slide jarred the ball loose from Bando. The play was scored an error on Bando and Detroit had the bases loaded.13

Dick McAuliffe drew a full-count run-scoring walk, giving Detroit a 3-1 advantage and chasing Hunter in favor of Seguí.14 Mickey Stanley stung a hard grounder at Campaneris, who misplayed it; Szotkiewicz scored.15 One out later, Horton hit a sacrifice fly to center field, bringing in McAuliffe for a 5-1 Tigers lead.

In the top of the third, it was the Tigers’ turn to hand over runs with sloppy fielding. Cain snagged Campaneris’s one-out grounder, then dropped the ball for an error while running to make the putout.16 Campaneris stole second, and one out later, Jackson drew another walk. Bando’s double to left brought Campaneris home. Felipe Alou grounded to third baseman Brown, who let the ball get past him for another error.17 Bando and Jackson scored to bring Oakland within 5-4.

The follies continued in the fourth. Rick Monday led off with a single to right, then moved all the way to third when Cain threw wildly on a pickoff attempt.18 Cain got the next two outs before Campaneris’s single to left tied the game. Reliever Jerry Robertson, in his second-to-last of 49 major-league appearances, got Rudi to ground to third. Brown threw the ball away for his second error, putting Campaneris on third and Rudi on second.19 Jackson’s single to right scored Campaneris for a 6-5 Athletics lead.

In the bottom of the fifth, Northrup collected the Tigers’ first hit off Seguí, a one-out single to right. Brown followed with a two-out walk, putting runners at first and second for lefty-swinging Szotkiewicz. Seguí’s signature pitch was a sharp-dropping forkball, but instead he challenged Szotkiewicz with a first-pitch fastball. Szotkiewicz belted it into the upper deck in right field, giving Detroit an 8-6 lead.20 It was the rookie’s first hit since a bunt single on May 10, a span of 14 at-bats. (Smith later said he would have hit for Szotkiewicz if a left-hander had been pitching, but since Seguí was a righty, Smith kept him in.21)

Detroit almost gave the lead back in the sixth. Campaneris hit a one-out single, Rudi walked, and the runners advanced to second and third when the Tigers’ third pitcher, Fred Scherman, threw away another pickoff attempt for the team’s fifth error. Tom Timmermann replaced Scherman in mid-batter and held the Athletics to one run on a sacrifice fly by Jackson.22 Detroit led 8-7.

Close-but-no-cigar rallies ensued. Detroit got a runner to third base in the sixth but couldn’t score. In the top of the seventh, Monday hit a two-out single and took second on yet another wild pickoff, the Tigers’ sixth and final error. Jim Driscoll, making his major-league debut as a pinch-hitter for Tony La Russa, flied to center field to end the frame.

Northrup homered to left on the second pitch from Mudcat Grant to lead off the bottom half.23 The game then quieted until the Athletics’ last turn in the ninth. With one out, a single by Bando, a wild pitch by Timmermann, and a single by Alou put the tying run on first base. Timmermann struck out Frank Fernandez and got Monday to ground to second, closing out the game in 3 hours and  two minutes. Scherman got the win, while Seguí took the loss. Timmermann earned his fifth save; he went on to record 27, tying him for third in the AL.24

Szotkiewicz told reporters he was prone to do “too much thinking” at the plate, but was trying to be more aggressive on Moses’ advice. “He told me if I saw a good pitch to go get it. I was on the defensive all the time but on the home run I went out after that one.”25

Unfortunately, the advice didn’t help the rookie keep his job. In the Tigers’ next game on June 19, Szotkiewicz was benched against hard-throwing Cleveland Indians lefty Sam McDowell.

Szotkiewicz started two more games, going 0-for-6, before Gutiérrez returned to the lineup for the second game of a June 21 doubleheader. Gutiérrez had a game for the ages, becoming the first American or National League batter of the twentieth century to go 7-for-7 in a nine-inning game. He retained the starting shortstop job from there, finishing with a .243 average. (The Tigers came in fourth in their division, while the Athletics were second.)

Szotkiewicz was hampered by a strained knee ligament that kept him out from July 20 to September 8.26 He hit one more home run before the injury, off Sonny Siebert of the Boston Red Sox on July 8, but slumped to finish the season at .107. For 1971, the Tigers acquired veteran shortstop Ed Brinkman from Washington. Szotkiewicz played four more seasons in the minors; troubled by knee injuries, he retired after the 1974 season.27

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Kevin Larkin and copy-edited by Keith Thursby. The author thanks Games Project chair John Fredland and deputy chair Gary Belleville for research assistance.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for box scores and general player, team, and season data.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/DET/DET197006170.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1970/B06170DET1970.htm

Photo of 1971 O-Pee-Chee card #749 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Chad Moody, “Ken Szotkiewicz,” SABR Biography Project, accessed December 2025, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/ken-szotkiewicz/. The nicknames were almost certainly references to the most common pronunciation of his last name: SOCK-uh-wits. (Other published sources give alternate pronunciations of SHUT-ke-vich or ZOT-kee-wits. Matt Zabitka, “Explosives Win 4 Titles,” Wilmington (Delaware) Morning News, April 19, 1968: 54; 1971 Detroit Tigers media guide, accessed via the Internet Archive in January 2026: 27, https://archive.org/details/detroit-tigers-1971-media-guide/page/n27/mode/2up.)

2 Based on a Baseball-Reference Stathead search run in December 2025, Scotty Barr of the 1908 and 1909 Philadelphia Athletics had the lowest lifetime batting average of any 20th-century non-pitcher with at least 100 plate appearances. (Barr hit .112 in 128 plate appearances.) If Szotkiewicz had come to the plate twice more and gone hitless, he would have had a lower average than Barr–though a hit (or two) in those plate appearances would have moved Szotkiewicz ahead of Barr. As of 2025, the all-time worst batting average for a non-pitcher with at least 100 plate appearances belonged to outfielder Mike Jordan, who hit .096 in 143 plate appearances with the 1890 Allegheny City team of the National League.

3 Seguí posted an ERA of 2.56 in 47 appearances spanning 162 innings in 1970.

4 Six errors, while poor by modern standards, is nowhere near the Tigers’ club record. As of 2024, the Tigers’ record for most errors in a nine-inning game was 12, set on May 1, 1901, and tied on May 6, 1903. “Club Fielding,” 2024 Detroit Tigers media guide: 213, https://www.mlb.com/tigers/fans/publications/media-guide.

5 Mark Armour, “Denny McLain,” SABR Biography Project, accessed December 2025, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/denny-mclain/.

6 Jim Hawkins, “Tiger Bullpen Comes Alive … But It’s in Deep Silence,” Detroit Free Press, June 16, 1970: 2D.

7 In 1969, Szotkiewicz hit .247 at Class A Lakeland and just .198 at Double A Montgomery. He’d been drafted by three major-league teams: the Philadelphia Phillies in the 10th round of the June 1965 amateur draft; the Minnesota Twins in the first round of the secondary phase of the June 1967 draft; and the Tigers in the first round of the secondary phase of the January 1968 draft.

8 “Meet the New Tigers: Ken Szotkiewicz,” Detroit Free Press, April 6, 1970: 7D; Joe Falls, “Tom Tresh Cut by Tigers,” Detroit Free Press, April 3, 1970: 1D.

9 Hunter had posted .500 records in 1965 (8-8) and 1968 (13-13). He’d thrown a perfect game in 1968 but had yet to develop into a consistently dominant pitcher.

10 Cain pitched eight games with the Tigers in 1968; he did not play in the majors in 1969.

11 Jim Hawkins, “Six Errors! But Tigers Win 9-7,” Detroit Free Press, June 18, 1970: 1D.

12 Hawkins, “Six Errors! But Tigers Win 9-7.”

13 This account of the play at third is based primarily on Hawkins, “Six Errors! But Tigers Win 9-7.” The Oakland Tribune’s game story reported that Bando dropped a throw to third. Ron Bergman, “A’s Closing – On Angels,” Oakland Tribune, June 18, 1970: 39.

14 Whatever was troubling Hunter did not last, as he pitched a complete-game, 6-3 win over the Chicago White Sox in his next start on June 21. Full count info taken from an inning-by-inning scoring roundup published in the Oakland Tribune, June 18, 1970: 40.

15 United Press International, “Tigers Win Despite Six Errors 9 to 7,” Huron Daily Tribune (Bad Axe, Michigan), June 18, 1970: 7.

16 Hawkins, “Six Errors! But Tigers Win 9-7.”

17 Larry Paladino (Associated Press), “Szotkiewicz: A Swinging Thinker,” Bay City (Michigan) Times, June 18, 1970: 1D.

18 The inning-by-inning scoring summary in the Oakland Tribune described Monday’s hit as a bunt single; other sources call it a single to right field.

19 Hawkins, “Six Errors! But Tigers Win 9-7.”

20 Bergman, “A’s Closing – On Angels”; Hawkins, “Six Errors! But Tigers Win 9-7”; Paladino, “Szotkiewicz: A Swinging Thinker”; Joanne Hulbert, “Diego Seguí,” SABR Biography Project, accessed December 2025, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/diego-segui/.

21 “Tigers Win Despite Six Errors 9 to 7.”

22 Bringing in Timmermann to face Jackson created a righty-vs.-lefty matchup, which Smith opted for even though lefty John Hiller was also ready. Smith explained his move by saying, “Timmermann’s been doing a helluva job for us.” The June 17 game was Timmermann’s fourth save in a week after his recall from Triple A Toledo. “Tigers Win Despite Six Errors 9 to 7”; Bergman, “A’s Closing – On Angels.”

23 It was Northrup’s 10th homer of the season. Phil Finch, “A’s in Alphonse-Gaston Act,” San Francisco Examiner, June 18, 1970: 60.

24 Ron Perranoski of the Twins led the AL with 34 saves. Lindy McDaniel of the New York Yankees was second with 29. Darold Knowles of the Washington Senators tied Timmermann with 27.

25 Paladino, “Szotkiewicz: A Swinging Thinker.”

26 The injury is mentioned on the back of Szotkiewicz’s 1971 Topps and O-Pee-Chee card, the one major-set card issued of him during his playing career. https://www.tcdb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/71/cid/16306/1971-Topps-749-Ken-Szotkiewicz

27 Moody, “Ken Szotkiewicz.”