This past August, more than 700 people of all ages—wearing red Hawaiian shirts, Tigers hats, fake and real mustaches, khaki shorts, and aviator sunglasses—attended a Sunday afternoon game at Comerica Park.
These costumes were not part of an official Detroit Tigers promotion. They were worn by participants of the “unofficial” 16th annual Magnum P.I. Day at Comerica Park. This tradition, which typically takes place during the last Sunday home game in August, pays homage to the popular 1980s CBS television series Magnum, P.I., starring Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum, a former Navy SEAL and Vietnam veteran turned fun-loving freelance private investigator in Hawaii.
And just like this year’s Tigers team, there was something special about this year’s event. Without any advance publicity, Tom Selleck himself surprised fans by making an appearance at the ballpark. He took photos with his Magnum look-alikes in front of the right-field wall before throwing the ceremonial first pitch.
“Someone told me a few years ago about the Magnum fans at Comerica Park, and I figured it was like three fans,” says Selleck, a lifelong rabid Tigers fan who had never been to the 25-year-old ballpark. “I found out that in fact, it was a whole section. I couldn’t believe it.”
He later reminisced for two innings during the telecast with play-by-play announcer Jason Benetti, analyst Andy Dirks, and FanDuel Sports Network reporter Johnny Kane.
When Selleck first donned the Old English “D” for his character on the award-winning Magnum P.I., which ran for 162 episodes from 1980 to 1988 (followed by decades of reruns), the Detroit-born actor created new Tigers fans across the country, while the hat became a top seller. In 1983, Tigers infielders Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker even made a cameo appearance in one episode of the series.
In recognition of Selleck’s Detroit connection and popularity, since 1987, America’s Thanksgiving Parade in Detroit has featured a Tom Selleck “Big Head” that marches down Woodward Avenue along with other Big Heads of famous Detroiters.
The day before Selleck’s appearance at the Tigers game, the actor, who appears much younger than his 80 years, gave an exclusive, wide-ranging one-hour interview with Hour Detroit at The Upright, a private lounge space in the basement of Oak & Reel restaurant on East Grand Boulevard in Detroit, along with a brief follow-up phone interview a couple of weeks later.
Over a nearly 60-year career, the award-winning actor, writer, and producer has garnered generations of admiring fans for his many unforgettable roles in dozens of television shows and movies, including Three Men and a Baby, Quigley Down Under, In & Out, and nine Jesse Stone movies, as well as for playing Dr. Richard Burke, Monica’s older boyfriend, on Friends.
Most recently, Selleck completed an impressive 14-season run on the wildly successful CBS series Blue Bloods, where he starred as New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan. To the shock of everyone, including Selleck, the perennial hit show was mysteriously canceled last year.
The cancellation did, however, have one silver lining, especially for his fans in Detroit. He finally had the time to come to Magnum P.I. Day at Comerica. “I always wanted to say thank you, but I was doing ‘Blue Bloods’ for 15 years and could never get away,” Selleck says.
“When I met the Magnum fans on the field, they were incredibly well mannered and I said a lot of thank yous,” he says. “It was a thrill seeing all those nice people, and I was moved. I was proud of them and proud to be part of it. Personally, it was a real validation of the work we did for a show we dearly loved, and it was remarkable since Magnum went off the air in 1988.”
Magnum P.I. was so popular that the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History has Selleck’s red “Jungle Bird” Hawaiian shirt, Detroit Tigers hat, and ring from the show.
“The museum officials said that it was the first time a Vietnam vet was shown in a positive light,” says Selleck, who won a 1984 Emmy for his role (and was nominated five times) and eventually became the series’ executive producer. About 50.7 million viewers tuned in to the final episode — the sixth largest audience of any TV series finale. “It could have gone on much longer. … It’s still playing, so I guess it held on. I wasn’t tired of it; I was just tired from it. Maybe the audience wasn’t tired of it, either.”
Last year, publisher HarperCollins released Selleck’s New York Times bestselling memoir, You Never Know, which details his improbable and remarkable rise to fame.
The book literally starts out with a bang, as Selleck first describes the harrowing moment when at 17 years old, he and two friends, while using his mom’s Chevy Corvair, tumbled down a cliff off Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles.
“Writing my memoir took four years, and it was very emotional for me. It was important that it was conversational,” says Selleck, who wrote the book in longhand on yellow legal pads in the afternoon and then at dinner read what he had written to his wife of 38 years, actor Jillie Mack. “I decided to do it up to the logical end of Magnum,” he says.
Might he one day do a Volume 2? “I don’t know. It’s a lot of work, but there are a lot of stories left — I will say that,” he says.
One can almost envision a biopic based on Selleck’s remarkable journey of becoming “an accidental actor.”
As a self-professed “mediocre” business administration student at the University of Southern California, where he was a basketball bench player, he took a History of American Theater class, “looking for an easy A.” Likely recognizing Selleck’s matinee idol features and engaging personality, the professor referred him to a talent agent.
After appearing in an Air Force training film, two episodes of ABC’s The Dating Game (where, as one of the “three hidden eligible bachelors,” he was passed over), and a Pepsi commercial, Selleck dropped out of USC as a senior when 20th Century Fox signed him to its “new talent” program.
In the meantime, after losing his student draft deferment, Selleck enlisted with the infantry unit of the California Army National Guard, where he rose to the rank of sergeant and served for six years. During that time, he continued to procure sporadic work, landing commercials and bit parts in TV shows including Lancer, Judd for the Defense, and Bracken’s World. For a decade, he made other TV appearances, including a contract role on the new CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless, where he played Jed Andrews, the love interest of one of the show’s core characters, Lorie Brooks, played by fan favorite Jaime Lyn Bauer. He also landed very small movies roles during this time, including playing Mae West’s “stud” in 1970’s Myra Breckinridge.
“I was always kind of a work in progress and had a lot of time to study. By age 32, I was getting better roles and gaining a lot of experience,” Selleck says.
Finally, in 1980, at the age of 35, after six failed pilots and roles on TV’s The Rockford Files and the Western miniseries The Sacketts, Selleck landed the role of a lifetime playing Thomas Magnum.
“When I burst on the scene not as a young leading man but as a grown-up leading man, it turned out to be a huge advantage because I was relatively unknown at the time,” he says.
Although Magnum P.I. would catapult Selleck’s career, before the series began filming, a lifetime “What if?” moment developed when the network prohibited Selleck from playing Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, a role that had been offered to him by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. In his memoir, Selleck wrote:
“I didn’t pretend I was happy about losing Raiders but I was not about to think of myself as a victim. Whether I thought CBS made the wrong decision — and I think they did — that did not mean I was treated unfairly. … Nobody made me sign a contract for Magnum. At that moment in time, it was the best thing that happened to me in about a dozen years as an actor.”
He says now, “I already had confidence as an actor, but the offer from Spielberg and Lucas was validating but very frustrating at the same time because I could have done both.”
Some of the subjects not covered in Selleck’s memoir include his early years in Detroit as a child, his lifelong love of the Detroit Tigers, and the numerous times over the years that he worked out with the team. Selleck was more than happy to talk about it all in our interview.
Born on Jan. 29, 1945, at the Women’s Hospital (now Hutzel Women’s Hospital at the Detroit Medical Center), Selleck says his parents, Martha (Jagger) and Robert Selleck, grew up in the Motor City and graduated from Southeastern High School. During World War II, his father served as a B-29 mechanic whose job included flight-testing new aircrafts, while his mother for a time worked at General Motors Fisher Body, where she contributed to the war effort.
“With my dad away, he didn’t see me until I was 2,” Selleck says. “My brother Bob was 19 months older than me, and with my mom, we lived at my mom’s parents’ house at 5902 Maryland in Detroit. We then moved to [10530] Lakepointe across from a school [Wayne Elementary], where we played. However, just before Christmas in 1948, my dad, who was in real estate sales, moved us to Sherman Oaks, California, where he [had previously] bought a 1,000-square-foot home on the GI Bill for $10,000. Believe it or not, it snowed there on Christmas Day.”
To help convince his wife to move, Selleck’s father promised her that every summer, the family would return to Detroit for a visit with their large extended family.
“We always drove straight through, and my mom’s job was to keep him awake,” says Selleck, who soon had younger siblings, Dan and Martha. “Dad worked on commission for Coldwell Banker, and he only had 10 days [of vacation]. When he did a little better, we stayed longer.”
Selleck shares memories of visiting the Boblo Island amusement park and even waterskiing as a teenager on the Detroit River with his cousin Bob Kelly.
“Back then, I remember that the water was pretty dirty.”
However, Selleck’s favorite Detroit pastime was attending Tigers games.
“We were all Tigers fans, and we went to Briggs Stadium every summer,” Selleck says. “The stadium was just phenomenal. My dad’s uncle was Lyle Fife [who was part owner of the Detroit Lions and, at one point, the team president]. He got us [Tom and his brother, Bob] into the Tiger locker room, where I met my idol, Al Kaline; Harvey Kuenn; Ray Boone; Charlie Maxwell; and others. We later attended some of the Thanksgiving Day football games. I also remember meeting Doak Walker and the Lions at the Bloomfield Hills training camp [at Cranbrook Schools’ athletic fields]. In many ways, I still consider myself a Detroiter. It’s not just because I was born there; … it’s because of my memories of going back every summer for 10 years. It became a part of me.”
Years later, on a few occasions in the ’80s and ’90s, Selleck took batting practice at Tiger Stadium, and he played in a 1992 Old-Timers Game at the ballpark, where he hit a single.
“I did really well and hit a few practice home runs,” he says. “My claim to fame is that I hit one out of the stadium. … Actually, it went over the fence and rolled down a tunnel,” he says, grinning. “I was a Tiger Stadium guy, and coming back to Detroit [this weekend] helped me make friends with Comerica Park. It’s a beautiful place and impressive, and I was able to embrace it quickly. I love the Tigers, and I always have.”
To prepare for his role in the 1992 comedy film Mr. Baseball, at the invitation of Tigers manager Sparky Anderson, Selleck trained with the team for three weeks at the 1991 spring training in Lakeland, Florida.
“I was kind of living the dream, and it helped me an incredible amount for that movie,” says Selleck, who calls Tigers utility first baseman Dave Bergman “indispensable.” “I always sat next to ‘Bergie’ in the dugout, and he would tell me stories.
“The first day was great, and the nicest thing was when Al Kaline asked if I would like to do long toss with him. So I got to play catch with my hero,” he says.
At a private dinner with Tigers President Jim Campbell and Anderson, Campbell confirmed to Selleck that indeed, Kaline had once turned down a $100,000 contract offer because he was not pleased with his performance.
“I think it was Horace Greeley who wrote: ‘Fame is a vapor, popularity is an accident, money takes wing, and the only thing that endures is character,’ and that was Al,” Selleck says.
Does Selleck follow that creed, too?
“I remember that on my good days, and I’ve tried to reflect on it when I screw up,” he says.
At first, Selleck says, he didn’t know how he would be accepted by the team during that spring training, but he knew he had been after being pranked.
“Mike Henneman put Cramer Atomic Balm in my jockstrap, but I got even when I hit one out against him. I started getting little angry notes from him in my locker: ‘Next time in the ribs.’ He’s a great guy.”
Tiger Hall of Famer Alan Trammell fondly recalls that training camp with Selleck: “Tom had some real skills, a nice left-handed swing, and he fit right in with the guys. But what really stands out for me was that he was always very down to earth and he just wanted to be one of the guys. He treated us like we were the stars.”
In a televised exhibition game against the Cincinnati Reds, Anderson even gave Selleck the opportunity to pinch-hit.
“The night before, I sat on the bench for nine innings watching the game, and it was cold,” Selleck says. “Afterwards, I ran wind sprints with the guys, and I pulled my hamstring. All I heard from my teammates was ‘If you can’t run with the big dogs, stay on the porch.’ Sparky calls me in the next day, and I thought he was going to talk about my hamstring, but he says, ‘You have to know what this is really like, so I’m going to have you pinch-hit.’”
In the eighth inning that night, Selleck stepped in for Rob Deer and faced Tim Layana. During a six-pitch at-bat (as now seen on YouTube), Selleck, clearly hobbled, fouled off three pitches and then struck out swinging on a knuckle curve.
“The guys in the bullpen later told me, ‘That was cold.’ But Layana didn’t want a goofy actor getting lucky and getting a hit — he’s trying to make the team. It was a thrill, and it was scary, but I wish my hamstring had been OK,” he says.
Today, Selleck is still not over the disheartening cancellation of Blue Bloods, though he looks forward to continuing his career as an actor.
“It was a huge disappointment, and I still don’t know why CBS did it,” says Selleck, who now, at least for a time, has been able to enjoy even more his 63-acre ranch in Thousand Oaks, California, with Mack. “When we went off the air, we were the No. 6 show out of 100 on broadcast television,” he says. “It was actually No. 9, but if you get rid of the football, we were the sixth most popular series in all of television. I’ve been on a lot of sets that were miserable where the cast didn’t like each other, but in Blue Bloods, everyone was professional and everyone liked each other. That is so rare.”
Might he someday reprise his role as Frank Reagan on the new Blue Bloods spinoff, Boston Blue, starring Donnie Wahlberg?
“I don’t know if I would do ‘Boston Blue’ — that’s another show. I think it’s partly my lot in life to make sure ‘Blue Bloods’ has its place in television history, but I don’t think it’s my lot in life to keep playing Frank Reagan,” he says. “I can’t predict the future. But I would like to do a comedy because I’ve done a few that were successful.”
Will he return to Comerica Park someday for another Magnum P.I. Day?
Selleck doesn’t hesitate.
“I would like to try.”
This story originally appeared in the November 2025 issue of Hour Detroit magazine. To read more, pick up a copy of Hour Detroit at a local retail outlet. Click here to get our digital edition.
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