Motor City Bengals All-Time Detroit Tigers Team: 1B Hank Greenberg

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We are truly in the dark days of the baseball off-season. Many of the splashy hot stove action has already taken place, there’s a ton of snow sitting outside your window, and Opening Day is still 85 days away.

Nonetheless, it’s never too early to think about the Detroit Tigers. To keep you warm through these cold, baseball-less weeks from now until Opening Day, Motor City Bengals will be presenting our All-Time Detroit Tigers Team.

We will present arguably the best Tiger at each position, sort of an Opening Day lineup at the Field of Dreams. Each position was voted on by staff members of Motor City Bengals and we’ll be presenting a new position each Sunday, beginning today with the best Detroit Tigers’ first baseman of all time: Hank Greenberg. 

The original “Hammerin’ Hank,” was arguably the best slugger in Detroit Tigers’ history. The bulk of his Tigers’ career came from 1933 to 1946 with nearly a four-year interruption for military service during WWII.

Greenberg had a cup of coffee with the club in 1930, but came up full-time in 1933. He helped the Tigers win their first pennant in 25 years in his second full year in the majors, hitting .339 and launching 26 home runs. The following year, in 1935, he led baseball with 36 homers and brought the very first World Series title to Detroit.

After an injury-shortened 1936 season, Greenberg reached the peak of his career in 1937 and 1938. In those two years, he mashed 98 homers, including the highest single-season total in Tigers’ history, 58, in 1938. He fell just short of Babe Ruth‘s then nine-year old record of 60 homers.

Greenberg was the first American League player drafted into military service in 1940 at the age of 29. He was honorably discharged from service just two days before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but promptly reenlisted. Achieving the rank of captain, Hank served in the China-Burma-India theater and was enlisted for total of 47 months, the most for any major league player.

He returned to the Tigers on July 1, 1945 and homered in his first game in nearly four years. In 78 games during the 1945 season, Greenberg launched 13 homers and hit .311. He hit a pennant-winning grand slam on the final day of the season, and contributed two homers with an average of .300 over a seven-game World Series victory over the Chicago Cubs.

He’d hit another 47 homers for the Tigers in 1946, but a salary dispute with the notoriously stingy Tigers’ management team of the 1940’s ended in Greenberg being sold to the Pittsburgh Pirates. He had another great year in 1947, but chose to retire and move to a front office role in Cleveland.

Hank Greenberg finished his 13-year major league career with a .313 average, 331 homers and 1,276 RBIs. He was elected to the Baseball Hall-of-Fame in 1956 and had his number five retired by the Tigers in 1983.

It is for all these reasons that Hank Greenberg is named to the Motor City Bengals’ All-Time Detroit Tigers team, and was a unanimous pick by staff.

Honorable mention for first base go to Norm Cash, Miguel Cabrera, and Cecil Fielder. 

Come back each week for a new position. Next week, we’ll sift through the terrific candidates for second base and name the best All-Time Tiger second sacker.