Ilitch was dedicated to making Red Wings a winner and also longed for a World Series title for his Tigers.
DETROIT – Before Mike Ilitch made his fortune in pizza, he had a passion for sports.
Ilitch, the founder of Little Caesars Pizza and the owner of the Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Tigers, died on Friday. He was 87.
Ilitch loved baseball and the Detroit Tigers. After spending four years in the U. S. Marine Corps following his graduation from Detroit’s Cooley High School, Ilitch spent four seasons as a minor league infielder with the Tigers, New York Yankees and Washington Senators organizations from 1952-55.
He never reached the major leagues but longed to own the Tigers after turning Little Caesars, which he founded in 1959 with wife Marian, into one of the most successful pizza chains in the country.
After a failed attempt to purchase the Tigers from John Fetzer, Ilitch realized his dream, buying the franchise from Tom Monaghan in 1992. By then Ilitch had owned the Detroit Red Wings for 10 years and gained a reputation as an aggressive owner who was committed to winning at any expense. He was rewarded with four Stanley Cup championships from 1997-2008.
But Detroit was far from Hockeytown when Ilitch purchased the Red Wings from Bruce Norris in 1982 for $8 million (they are now worth $625 million, according to Forbes.com). The once-proud Original Six franchise that boasted Gordie Howe and Ted Lindsay was one of the worst-run organizations in hockey in the 1970s, regularly playing in front of sparse crowds at Olympia Stadium and Joe Louis Arena when it opened in 1979.
Ilitch felt compelled to give away a car at every home game to attract crowds in those days. Soon his team would be playing in front of sellout crowds every game and there was no need to raffle any cars.
Ilitch’s mandate to Jimmy Devellano, his first Red Wings general manager, was to get him the best players possible. The first player Devellano selected in his initial draft in 1983 was Steve Yzerman, who would become the franchise cornerstone for two decades and the longest-serving captain in NHL history.
Devellano signed a slew of college free agents in the 1980s and spirited Jacques Demers away from the St. Louis Blues to coach the team in 1986. They experienced immediate success, reaching the Western Conference finals in consecutive seasons in 1987 and ’88, putting Detroit back on the hockey map.
The Red Wings were pioneers of European scouting in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as Ilitch spared no expense to procure players from Czechoslovakia (Petr Klima), Sweden (Nicklas Lidstrom) and the former Soviet Union (Sergei Fedorov, Vladimir Konstantinov, Slava Kozlov).
After several years of playoff disappointments Ilitch hired Scotty Bowman, the NHL’s all-time winningest coach, in 1993. Two years later, the club reached the Cup final for the first time since 1966, getting swept by the New Jersey Devils.
In 1997, the Red Wings ended a 42-year championship drought by sweeping the Philadelphia Flyers in the finals. During the postgame celebration following Game 4 at the Joe, Yzerman handed the Stanley Cup to Ilitch.
Ilitch promoted Ken Holland to GM in the summer of 1997 and the club defended its title in 1998, followed by Cups in 2002 and 2008.
Detroit became a premier destination for free agents and players seeking trades. Ilitch loved big-name talent and the Red Wings acquired future Hall-of-Famers like Brendan Shanahan, Igor Larionov, Slava Fetisov, Chris Chelios, Dominik Hasek, Luc Robitaille and Brett Hull.
The Red Wings’ 25-year playoff streak is the longest current run in the four major professional sports leagues.
Ilitch was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2003 and the U. S. Hockey Hall of Fame in 2004. He won the Lester Patrick Trophy for outstanding service to hockey in 1991.
Ilitch’s dream of winning a World Series wasn’t realized, but after many lean years before and after he took the reins, the Tigers finally turned the corner in 2006 under manager Jim Leyland. He took the Tigers to the World Series in 2006 and 2012, where they lost both times, to the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants, respectively.
But like the Red Wings, the Tigers became a draw for top talent because of Ilitch’s spending. He brought in players like Pudge Rodriguez, Magglio Ordonez, Miguel Cabrera, Gary Sheffield and Prince Fielder through free agency or trade.
Ilitch enjoyed success dabbling in less popular sports as well.
He owned the Detroit Caesars, a professional men’s slowpitch softball team, from 1977-79. With former Tigers stars Norm Cash and Jim Northrup, the Caesars packed small Memorial Field in East Detroit and won two championships.
Ilitch was one of the first owners in the Arena Football League, launching the Detroit Drive in 1988. The Drive, playing at Joe Louis Arena, were one of the most successful teams in the early days of the AFL, playing in the ArenaBowl in every year of their six-year existence and winning four titles.
