High comedy: The day Norm Cash failed to get a leg up on 'Ryan Express'

Although they finished the season four games above .500, the defending AL East champs weren’t exactly the 2019 Minnesota Twins. Only one Detroit regular, 30-year-old outfielder Willie Horton, finished the season with a .300-plus batting average. In April, 23-year-old Royals righty Steve Busby no-hit Detroit.

Ryan, who no-hit the Royals on May 15, was coming off a bad outing against the Orioles. In a 7-1 loss to Baltimore that dropped his record to 10-11, he gave up six runs and eight hits in six innings.

When Ryan warmed up in the bullpen at ancient Tiger Stadium, pitching coach Tom Morgan spotted a penny. Pick it up, he told Ryan, “just for luck.”

By the end of the third inning, Detroit clearly was getting “The Ryan Express” at his peak. The 26-year-old right-hander had struck out seven — three looking — before the Sunday afternoon "Cap Day" crowd of 41,411.

Ryan’s curveball was fabulous, but his fastball was simply ridiculous. “Every [one],” Angels catcher Art Kusnyer told the Detroit Free Press, “went zzzzzzrooom!” The catcher said home plate umpire Ron Luciano thought either Ryan’s curve or fastball should be made illegal.

“You look at that guy,” California manager Bobby Winkles said afterward, “and sometimes you wonder how he can ever lose.”

With the Angels leading 1-0 in the fourth, Ryan breezed through the Tigers, a predominantly left-handed-hitting lineup, striking out the side. Ryan fanned the side again in the seventh.

But in the eighth, with Angels up 6-0, he began to tire. Ryan said his pitching arm felt like it typically did a couple of hours after a long game. Still, he retired the Tigers in order, notching his 17th strikeout.

After Ryan retired the first hitter in the bottom of the ninth, Gates Brown lined to shortstop Rudy Meoli, who went up on his toes to snatch the ball about a foot over his head — the only serious Tigers threat of the game.

Up came Cash, a 38-year-old first baseman who enjoyed having fun on — and off — the ballfield. “There were times on the road when that SOB put me to bed,” Brown told the Free Press years later, “and he would go back [out].”

“Life of the party,” Tigers Hall of Famer Al Kaline called his longtime teammate.

Cash, who won the AL batting title in 1961 but was now a .237 hitter, had already struck out twice against Ryan. He figured he had no chance, so the Tigers' life of the party strolled from the clubhouse to the plate with...a table leg that reportedly had been sent to him as a joke. Longtime Tigers broadcaster Ernie Harwell mistakenly called it a piano leg.

In grainy footage of the at-bat, Luciano looks down at the slab of wood and appears to laugh. He ordered Cash to chuck it. Where was ESPN when we really needed it?

Cash wondered why he couldn’t use the illegal lumber: “I won’t hit him anyway.” Using a real bat, “Stormin’ Norman” meekly flied out to left to end the game.

“Best stuff and best control I’ve ever had,” Ryan told reporters afterward.

“Best I’ve ever seen him,” Tigers manager Billy Martin told the Los Angeles Times.

A Detroit sportswriter called Ryan’s performance “one of the most impressive one-man shows in baseball history.” But Cash’s comedy act —recalled fondly by teammates decades afterward — went uncovered in the local newspapers the next day.

Weeks later, though, Detroit held a “Norm Cash Day” before a sold-out Tiger Stadium. Local baseball writers gave a bat to Cash, then Detroit’s all-time leader in strikeouts by a hitter.

Naturally, it was full of holes.