Tigers' Willie Horton remembers 1968 Series

SAN FRANCISCO -- Detroit Tigers great Willie Horton was so nervous Wednesday, he woke up in his downtown San Francisco hotel room at 4:30 in the morning and couldn't go back to sleep.

He felt as if this was 1968, when he led the Tigers to the World Series championship.

Now, 44 years later, Horton was in the Tigers' dugout before Game 1 at AT&T Park, knowing just what a World Series title would mean to the city of Detroit.

"It would be a beautiful thing," Horton said. "I remember the feeling we had in '68. It brought people together. We needed it so much. We were going though tough times with the riots and everything. It was a way to get the whole city together.''

Horton, whose number (23) is retired by the Tigers, took to the streets in 1967 during the riots, actually standing on a car in uniform, trying to restore peace in his city.

"People were more worried about me getting hurt than anything else," Horton says. "But I had to do it. It was my old neighborhood. I wasn't scared then, but when I look back, now I do."