February 23 in Tigers and mlb history:
1888: Future HOF'er James "Pud" Galvin signs with Pittsburgh for $3,000, including $1,000 in advance. The club offered him $3,500 with no advance money, but Galvin needs the $1,000 to tide him over the winter.
1918: Barney Dreyfuss of the Rules Committee launches a campaign to ban the spitter. He will succeed next year.
1934: Replacing skipper Max Carey, Brooklyn coach Casey Stengel signs a two-year deal to manage the Dodgers.
1940: The A's waive Lynn Nelson to Detroit. Nelson was the A's top winner in 1939 with 10 victories, but he'll go 1-1 with Detroit before bowing out.
1960: Demolition of Ebbets Field begins. Lucy Monroe sings the National Anthem, and Roy Campanella is given an urn of dirt from behind home plate.
1964: The San Francisco Giants acquire P Masanori Murakami, 3B Tatsuhico Tanaka, and C Hiroshi Takahashi on a player development deal with the Nankai Hawks, who own rights to all three. They are the first Japanese natives ever to play for American teams. All three are assigned to the Magic Valley Cowboys (Pioneer League). Although none of the three are considered top prospects, Murakami will confound everyone by reaching the major leagues by September after an outstanding season in the minors.
1964: Charlie Finley gives in to American League pressure and signs a four-year lease with the municipal government to keep the A's in Kansas City. Finley wanted two years. His exasperated AL colleagues vote 9-1 that KC's offer is reasonable. Finley will move the team out of KC as soon as the lease expires after the 1967 season.
1976: Major League owners announce that spring training will not open until a new labor contract is agreed upon.
1977: The Detroit Tigers signed Tito Fuentes as a free agent.
1986: Although he loses his arbitration case, Boston Red Sox third baseman Wade Boggs receives the largest amount ($1.35 million) ever awarded by this process.
1988: A committee of Chicago aldermen vote 7-2 to allow the Cubs to install lights and play up to 18 night games a year at Wrigley Field. The Cubs had feared losing the 1990 All-Star Game, as well as future playoff and World Series games, if lights were not installed.
1990: Despite the owners dropping their arbitration and minimum salary proposals, spring training camps remain closed.
1996: The Rules Committee announces that the strike zone will be larger, dropping it from the top of the knees to the hollow below the knees. The change comes out of a series of recommendations to help speed up play.
2010: Major League Baseball announces that it will begin testing minor leaguers for human growth hormone this season. The illegal performance-enhancing substance has long been considered undetectable by conventional doping tests, but its presence has recently been isolated through a blood test, which will be used for this purpose.
2012: Ryan Braun becomes the first major league player to successfully appeal a positive PED test when arbitrator Shyam Das rules in his favor with regard to a positive test performed during the 2011 postseason. The test showed a testosterone level so high as to be almost unimaginable without outside interference. The three-man pannel chaired by Das rules that the fact that proper protocol was not followed in collecting and storing the sample prior to testing, makes it impossible to be certain that it has not been subject to tampering at some point. Braun had proclaimed his innocence all along, and now no longer faces a 50-game suspension.
2012: The group featuring former Los Angeles Dodgers manager Joe Torre announces it is bowing out of the bidding for the team because current owner Frank McCourt will not include the parking lots outside Dodger Stadium in the package. McCourt built his now-threatened fortune by operating parking lots in large cities. Torre's group states that by keeping control of this key resource, McCourt will make it impossible for the winning bidders to manage the team's assets effectively. The group, which was among the favorites to emerge as the new owners at the end of the court-supervised process, leaves the door open to a re-engagement if the terms of the sale are changed to include the disputed lots.
2016: The Detroit Tigers signed Casey McGehee as a free agent.
2018: The first Cactus League and Grapefruit League games of spring training are played today with Major League Baseball paying tribute to the victims of the horrific school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL as all players wear special caps. Proceeds from the sale of this autographed memorabilia will go to a fund dedicated to the victims. Some teams also go further by inviting students and school personnel to meet players and perform various roles at the games as a show of solidarity.
2018: The Detroit Tigers signed Louis Coleman as a free agent.
2018: The Detroit Tigers signed Francisco Liriano as a free agent.
2019: The Detroit Tigers signed Josh Harrison as a free agent.
Tigers players birthdays:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/j/johnsro02.shtml?redir
Roy Johnson 1929-1932.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/shelbjo01.shtml
John Shelby 1990-1991.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/whitero02.shtml
Rondell White 2004-2005.
Tigers players who passed away:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/crockda01.shtml
Davey Crockett 1901.
Baseball Reference
