Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker “Keystone Kids”
Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker met as teenagers. While other eighteen-year-olds awkwardly settled into freshman dorms across the country, Alan and Lou bunked up in the Tigers’ hotel down in St. Petersburg, Florida, for the 1976 Instructional League season. Like many other adolescent roommates, they became fast friends. “The very first day, we clicked,” remembered Trammell. Lou agreed, adding “We did everything together.” Even as kids — Sports Illustrated said they looked like they were “still eligible for the junior prom” —their friendship had a certain maturity. “We comforted each other a little. If one of us had a bad night, the other one wouldn't let it get him down. We sort of used each other as crutches, and we became pretty close.” The only slight difference between Alan and Lou and other emotionally intelligent kids bonding in college is that Alan and Lou would go on to turn more double plays together than any other duo in the history of baseball.
For nineteen seasons — until Lou retired in 1995 at the age of 38 — the pair were inseparable on the field and inextricably linked in the baseball public’s imagination. With Lou at second base and Alan at short, they played 1,918 games for the Detroit Tigers together — a record. Through marriages and childbirths and aging out of their athletic greatness, Lou and Alan turned over 1,100 double plays together. The Tigers went from basement dwellers to perennial powerhouses and the 1984 World Champions. The United States went from Jimmy Carter and inflation and hostages to Bill Clinton and internet and interns. All the while, the “Keystone Kids” ended innings on ground balls. Their friendship and athleticism was a constant.
As individuals, both men had exceptional careers. Alan’s was a touch more exceptional, making their dynamic all the more compelling. When they won the World Series together, Alan was the series MVP, hitting a remarkable .450 for the series. Both played in All-Star games and won Gold Gloves and Silver Slugger Awards. Alan just did it slightly more often. Trammell simply had an offensive gear that Whitaker did not. In 1987, Alan Trammell almost single-handedly powered the Detroit Tigers to win the division, batting .400 over the month of September when the team needed him the most. The spotlight shone most brightly on Alan.
And yet there is no evidence that any of this bothered Lou. In fact, he seemed to be his friend’s biggest cheerleader. On the final day of that 1987 season, the Tigers hosted the Blue Jays to determine who would take the AL East title. When the Tigers won in a pitchers’ duel and the team mobbed the mound in celebration, Lou held back and pulled second base from the ground. With a black marker, he scribbled on the bottom of the bag, “To Alan Trammell, 1987’s Most Valuable Player, from your friend Lou Whitaker.” Trammell didn’t actually win the 1987 AL MVP (George Bell did), but that’s, of course, beside the point. Trammell still has the base prominently displayed in his home and describes it as his most treasured memento from his playing days.
It’s a feature of youth and its bundle of insecurities to view life as a competition with a winner. Middle age, in contrast, demands more selflessness from us: in marriage, in parenting, in caring for aging parents, in preparing what’s to come for us. Is there a better example of that selflessness than that gesture from Lou? At the very moment his team captured the division title, Lou — one of the great athletes of his generation — not only thinks of his childhood friend before his own joy but memorializes in permanent ink that he thought Alan was more valuable to the team than he was.
Lou Whitaker was man in full bloom: confident and content enough in himself to care for others. Children — even those of an adult age — are understandably too consumed by ego and needs and insecurities to take greater delight in the success of a loved one than their own. Lou was a man.
And their enduring friendship was the greatest beneficiary. In the years since they retired, Alan Trammell has been voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Lou Whitaker has not. Fitting to their friendship, there’s no one who finds this to be a greater injustice than Alan Trammell. (He has a point: there are very few players with Whitaker’s career WAR untainted by steroids who doesn’t have a plaque.). He tells everyone that his “dream” was that they got inducted “together.” Indeed, Trammell spent much of his induction speech talking about Lou:
“My whole career, I had been linked with one person. For 19 years, Lou Whitaker and I formed the longest running double-play combination in the history of baseball. I doubt that record will ever be broken. Lou and I were called up to the big leagues from Double-A on the same day. We both played our first big-league ballgame at Fenway Park on the same day. We both got hits at our first major league at-bats off the same pitcher, Reggie Cleveland. And both got our last hits of our careers off the same pitcher, Mike Fetters. Can you believe that? That’s truly amazing. For all those years, it was Lou and Tram. Lou, it was an honor and pleasure to have played alongside you all those years. And my hope is some day you’ll be up here as well.”
In contrast, it's difficult find examples of Lou talking about it.
Either he doesn’t care, or he allows his friend to speak for him. Whether or not Alan Trammell was the AL’s Most Valuable Player in 1987 is beside the point. Compared to their enduring friendship, the statistics are trivial. Similarly, what the voting committee thinks is largely unimportant. What matters is the actual message that Lou scribbled to Alan on that second base: Alan was the most valuable player to Lou. And it didn’t matter how anyone else felt. Isn’t that what we are all looking for?
by Kevin Blake