The Detroit Tigers' Other Members of the 500 Home Run Club

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Miguel Cabrera is the newest member of baseball’s vaunted ‘500 Home Run Club’. Two of the other men who clubbed that many homers also spent part of their careers in a Detroit Tigers uniform: Eddie Mathews and Gary Sheffield.

Sunday, August 22 will go down as one of the most exciting days of the Detroit Tigers’ 2021 season. In the top of the sixth inning against the Toronto Blue Jays, Miguel Cabrera sent a pitch from lefty Steven Matz sailing over the wall in right-center to become the 28th major leaguer to hit 500 home runs.

Miggy also became the third member of ‘the 500 Club’ who has played for the Tigers. The other two aren’t as closely associated with the team as Cabrera is. Eddie Mathews hit his 500th homer just before joining the Tigers, and Gary Sheffield hit his milestone shot shortly after leaving Detroit.

Eddie Mathews

Before becoming a Tiger, Mathews made his name with the Milwaukee Braves. He actually debuted with the Braves in 1952 while they were still based in Boston and wrapped up his tenure with the team in 1966 after they moved to Atlanta. Mathews’ credentials were impressive. He crushed at least 40 home runs in four different seasons, and he led the National League twice. In Game 4 of the 1957 World Series, Mathews’ two-run, walk-off homer gave the Braves a 7-5 win over the New York Yankees.

It was that kind of big-game experience that the Tigers were looking for when they acquired the 35-year-old Mathews from the Houston Astros in August 1967. Detroit was in the midst of a tight, four-team battle for first place in the American League. For the majority of Mathews’ new teammates, it was the first time they’d been through the rigors of a pennant race. Norm Cash and Al Kaline were around in 1961 when the Tigers were contenders, and Cash had four pinch-hitting appearances for the Chicago White Sox in the 1959 World Series. Jerry Lumpe made it to the Fall Classic twice with the Yankees (both times against Mathews’ Braves). Dick Tracewski made it twice with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Mathews was a welcome addition. Kaline commented,

“It’s just good having him around. He gives class to our club. I only wish we had him 10 years ago. With those right-field seats of ours, he’d have hit 700 home runs.”

A month before the trade, Mathews hit the 500th home run of his career against the San Francisco Giants’ Juan Marichal, a future Hall of Famer. The left-handed hitting Mathews arrived in Detroit with 503 homers to his name. On August 22, in the opener of a doubleheader against the Minnesota Twins at Tiger Stadium, he hit number 504. Mathews led off the bottom of the eighth by depositing a Ron Kline pitch into the upper deck in right field. That gave the Tigers a 7-3 lead, which held up as the final score. Detroit took the nightcap, 2-1. Every win was important, and Mathews was happy to help. He said,

“I feel like I’m 23 again. It’s good to get that first one out of the way…This is a comfortable place to hit. It’s got to help your confidence to know you don’t have to hit it a mile to get it out.”

On September 6, the Tigers began the day 1 1/2 games out of first place. There was only a half-game separation in between each of the contenders, first place Minnesota, second place Boston, third place Chicago, and fourth place Detroit. The Tigers were hosting the Kansas City A’s in a doubleheader and led 1-0 after three and a half innings in the opener. Mathews homered off future Hall of Famer Catfish Hunter to begin the fourth. The A’s scored a pair of runs in the fifth and another pair in the sixth to take a 4-2 lead.

The Tigers rallied in the seventh. Tommy Matchick singled. Dick McAuliffe and Kaline walked to load the bases for Willie Horton, who drove in two runs with a single. The game was once again tied. Mathews followed with his second home run of the game, a shot to right field off reliever Lew Krausse. That put Detroit up by a 6-4 score, and they went on to an 8-5 victory. The Tigers earned a big doubleheader sweep with a 6-3 win in the second game.

Minnesota lost that afternoon, Boston was idle, and Chicago won that evening. At the end of the day, all four teams found themselves in a virtual four-way tie at the top of the standings. A mere percentage point was the difference between the Twins and White Sox (each 78-61, .561) and the Tigers and Red Sox (each 79-62, .560). Mathews contributed six home runs to the Tigers’ 1967 pennant chase, which ended in disappointment on the final day of the regular season.

Mathews remained with the Tigers in 1968. In a limited role, he hit three longballs, including two in a game against the California Angels in Anaheim on May 27. The second one, the 512th of his career, moved him ahead of Hall of Famer Mel Ott on the all-time list. Neither one was enough to lead the Tigers past the Angels, who won, 7-6. Those were the last two home runs that Mathews hit in the big leagues.

In the ’68 World Series, Mathews pinch-hit for Don Wert in Game 2. He also started Game 4 at third base and played the whole game. In a total of four plate appearances against the St. Louis Cardinals, he singled and walked. The Tigers released Mathews at the end of October, and his playing days came to an end. He managed the Braves for three years, including 1973, a season in which future Tiger Darrell Evans hit 41 home runs. Mathews was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1978.

Eddie Mathews reaches out to shake hands with former Braves teammates Johnny Logan and Felix Mantilla during pregame ceremonies at Milwaukee’s County Stadium before a game between the Detroit Tigers and Chicago White Sox on Aug. 26, 1968. (Photo via Imagn Images.) /

Gary Sheffield

Sheffield is the only member of ‘the 500 Club’ to make his major league debut at Tiger Stadium. On September 3, 1988, the 19-year-old Milwaukee Brewers prospect entered the game to play shortstop in the ninth inning of a 7-3 Detroit loss. The next day, Tigers pitchers Walt Terrell, Paul Gibson, and Guillermo Hernandez held young Sheff hitless, although the Brewers came out on top, 6-1.

After the Brewers traded Sheffield to the San Diego Padres, he blossomed. In 1992, he hit .330 to win the National League batting crown and enjoyed the first of his eight seasons of 30 or more home runs. Twice, he hit over 40 in a season. Sheffield went on to play for the Florida Marlins, Los Angeles Dodgers, Atlanta Braves, and New York Yankees before he was traded to the Tigers on November 10, 2006. Detroit was coming off a World Series loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, and the team’s overall weak performance at the plate in the five-game Series revealed a glaring need for an impact hitter. Sheffield fit the bill.

The well-traveled Gary Sheffield. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images) /

The right-handed hitting veteran had accumulated 455 home runs by the time he joined the Tigers. Sheffield hit his first Detroit homer on a very cold Saturday afternoon in Kansas City. First-pitch temperature on April 7, 2007, was an astonishing 29 degrees. With two outs in the bottom of the first, he smashed the first pitch he saw from Royals righty Gil Meche. It landed in the left-field seats. (One season later, Meche gave up the first home run that Miguel Cabrera hit for the Tigers.) Later in the game, Sheff added an RBI single, and the Tigers won, 6-5.

The Tigers and Cleveland Indians battled for first place in the American League Central that summer. The two teams met for an important three-game series in early July at Comerica Park and split the first pair of contests. The pitching matchup for the finale on July 5 was Justin Verlander vs. CC Sabathia. Nearly 41,000 fans were on hand. Sheffield’s sacrifice fly in bottom of the third tied the game at 2-2. Carlos Guillen hit a three-run home run later in the inning to give the Tigers a 5-2 lead. Sheffield, who homered in the series opener, lined a 398-foot drive to left-center. It was gone. The two-run jack was an effective knockout punch, but the Tigers piled on more runs later in the game and crushed the Indians, 12-3.

Sabathia, the AL’s Cy Young Award winner that year, only lasted four innings. Verlander, who enjoyed a successful sophomore season, picked up his 10th win. For Sheffield, the homer was his 475th, which tied him with Hall of Famers Stan Musial and Willie Stargell on the all-time list. The Tigers’ designated hitter was more fired up about the victory, which narrowed Cleveland’s division lead to one game. He exclaimed,

“You could see it in guys’ eyes when they came in today. We didn’t want Cleveland to win the series. We didn’t want those guys walking out of here with the attitude and confidence that they can beat us. We want to show them (that) we can beat you also.”

The Indians had the last laugh, however. They won the division, and the Tigers finished eight games out in second place. Sheffield was also a second-place finisher. He hit 25 home runs, three fewer than team leader Magglio Ordoñez. Unfortunately, Sheffield really wasn’t the same after he hurt his right shoulder in a collision with second baseman Placido Polanco in late July during one of Sheff’s rare appearances in right field. He slumped in the season’s final two months, and when the sore shoulder got worse, it knocked him out of the lineup for a total of 19 games. He underwent arthroscopic surgery after the season.

Sheffield proclaimed that he was pain-free the following spring training, and the 2008 Tigers’ lineup looked like it would it be even more potent with a healthy Sheff and new acquisition Miguel Cabrera. It wasn’t. Sheffield hit only three home runs in his first 39 games before a strained left oblique landed him on the disabled list. The injury cost him 24 games.

Gary Sheffield and Miguel Cabrera high-five on September 27, 2008. (Photo by Mark Cunningham/MLB Photos via Getty Images) /

He homered in his return on June 24, which cut a Cardinals lead to 8-4. That ended up as the final score. Two days later, he hit a game-tying home run to left field in the bottom of the ninth against Cardinals closer Ryan Franklin. With a Win Probability Added of .465, it was Sheffield’s biggest homer as a Tiger. He was in the on-deck circle when the Tigers won on Clete Thomas’ bases-loaded walk in the 10th. Afterward, Sheffield said that he was going to “make up for lost time” and “get stronger”.

Although Sheffield did stay in the lineup for the remainder of the season, his highlights were sparse. He smacked two home runs in a game against the A’s in a 14-8 win at Comerica Park on September 8, a solo shot to left in the first inning and a grand slam to left-center in the second. At home against the Rays on September 26, Sheffield hit another pair of round-trippers. In the bottom of the first, his solo homer to right field gave the Tigers a 3-0 lead. He boosted that lead to 6-3 with a solo blast to left-center. The latter was Sheffield’s 499th home run, which prompted chants of “Gary! Gary! Gary!” from the 39,617 in attendance. He was closing in on history, and it was an exciting moment for everyone. After the 6-4 victory, Sheff remarked,

“Something big is about to happen. You never expect something like this. I didn’t think it would sink in, but it is. It’s something I never envisioned happening.”

There were three games left in the season, but Sheffield collected only a single and three walks in 14 plate appearances. Game 162 ended with him standing in the on-deck circle after Curtis Granderson’s flyout retired the Tigers in the ninth inning of an 8-2 loss to the White Sox in Chicago. Sheffield finished the season with 19 home runs. Nobody knew it at the time, but he would never make another plate appearance for the Tigers in a regular season game.

Detroit released the 40-year-old Sheffield on March 31, 2009 after a dismal showing in spring training. With one year left on his contract and $14 million still owed to him, it was quite a surprise. Even manager Jim Leyland was shocked. He called the news “a bomb”. Sheffield said he didn’t know how to react. A few days later, the New York Mets signed him. In his sixth game with the Mets, on April 17, Sheffield hit his 500th home run to lead off the seventh inning against his original team, the Brewers. It tied the game at 4-4. He hit 10 homers that season and finished his career with 509.

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The Detroit Tigers’ Other Members of the 500 Home Run Club

Miguel Cabrera is the newest member of baseball’s vaunted ‘500 Home Run Club’. Two of the other men who clubbed that many homers also spent part of their careers in a Detroit Tigers uniform: Eddie Mathews and Gary Sheffield.

Eddie Mathews

Gary Sheffield

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