I grew up in Michigan and I have been a lifetime Tigers fan of course. He was a man of great character.

Sparkey NEVER EVER stepped on the line! In his career of coaching with both the TIGERS & the REDS, he must have made tens & thousands of trips to the mound to retrieve the ball and hand it to the relief pitcher. In all of those trips to the mound, he would get to the base line and sort of "hop" well over the base line. Superstition... do you think?

Another thing that Sparkey did... he would start the game with bubble gum and add more bubble gum as the game went on. Towards the 7th inning or so, he would have a accumulated quite a wad of bubble gum. Many times he would take the wad bubble gum out of his mouth and stretch it around a wad of plug tobacco, then stuff the whole thing back into his mouth at the cheeck.

What a great coach! RIP Sparkey.