Denny McLain: One of a kind

Imagine winning 31 games in a season?

If you’re talking baseball history, let’s be frank. Of course, no MLB pitcher will ever approach Cy Young’s 511 victories, the last of which came on September 11, 1911, 114 years ago.

It’s almost as doubtful that any hitter will manage to match Ted Williams’ .406 campaign of 1941, the game’s last .400 hitter, or Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak which was recorded that same season. That was 84 years ago. How many generations is that? Cy, Ted, Joe, they’re all gone, of course.

There is a guy sticking around who accomplished something on a major-league field on September 14, 1968 that we’ll never see again. (I was alive to watch it on TV and later got to be good friends with the left fielder who saw Detroit’s Willie Horton’s game-winning hit sail over his head.) It was some 57 years ago that my friend Jim Gosger saw the ball travel over his head, giving McLain and the Tigers a walk-off win, his 30th.

Yes, friends, on that Saturday afternoon in the Motor City, Tiger ace Denny McLain won his 30th baseball game in a single season, MLB’s final 30-game winner, I guarantee you. Until Denny did it, it had been 34 seasons since St. Louis’s Dizzy Dean turned in a 30-7 season for the 1934 Cardinals. That’s how rare it was.

McLain, who will turn 81 at the end of March, is still a legend in the Detroit area, thanks in large part to that once-in-a-lifetime season. McLain, 31-6 with a 1.96 ERA, was named the American League’s Most Valuable Player and also its Cy Young Award winner. And he did it all with Pepsi, a high-riding fastball and throwing quick strikes. Not necessarily in that order.

Detroit Tigers’ Denny McLain in his 31-6, MVP, Cy Young Award-winning 1968 season.

“I was probably a 75-to-80% fastball pitcher,” McLain said from his Michigan home the other afternoon. “I had a great fastball that did have great movement. It rose and then tailed a hair, just enough to be effective.”

McLain, who was 131-91 in a 10-year-career, was one of those rare transcendent players who — for a fleeting moment — absolutely owned the game of baseball. Most players hope for a great month or two, even a red-hot week. McLain owned that 1968 season, the year of the pitcher. While Bob Gibson had a 1.12 ERA in the National League, which prompted the game to lower the mound, McLain won nine more games, threw 32 more innings, his ERA was just 0 .78 higher (1.90) and Denny lost his last two games by matching 2-1 scores. He could have been 33-4!

McLain was 108-51 in his first five seasons as a Tiger starter, and a stunning 55-15 in the back-to-back ‘68-’69 seasons, throwing a combined 661 innings over those two magnificent campaigns, two of the finest back-to-back years by any pitcher in modern baseball history. Detroit Tiger fans never forgot that. Nor should they.

So, no, he can’t go much of anywhere in the Detroit area without someone bringing up the 30-win season.

“It’s still at the top of hit parade around here,” he laughed. “Which was really nice for my wife, when she was living, and of course, my kids. It’s been kind of a nice way to go out. I can be retired now (He’s 80!) but I can work if I want to. I do radio, podcasts, interview shows and I try to do as many as I can.

“I want to stay current with everything, keep my mind in the game. And you know, there are those guys in the game today, trying to take that next step to take advantage of the game. But the way this game is, it’ll take advantage of you before you take advantage of it. It’s a tough game. And you can either try to fool it or go at it and run it out. That’s the way to go.”

With an eye on the game today, he can tell you why modern pitchers aren’t as durable, why their arms can’t stand up to the strain of multiple innings. |Seattle’s Logan Gilbert led the majors in innings pitched last year, throwing 206.1. In 1968, McLain was at 200-plus innings in JULY. There were three months to go!

“The game is absolutely much easier if you’re only throwing one pitch, maybe two. There’s not as much stress and strain on your shoulder. I had a fastball that rises and if you have that or can develop that, it’s easier to control and you won’t have as many arm issues. If you’re trying to do funny things, throwing a slider or a curveball or screwball, throwing junk, you’re going to hurt yourself.

“My dad (Thomas) taught me how to throw a fastball and how to set them up when they come up the next time. The bottom line is, he’d say, “Be ready when it’s time to be ready”

At the time McLain was in his prime, the standard baseball pitching gospel was “keep the ball down. Make them hit it on the ground. Work low in the strike zone.” McLain, whom I think it’s fair to call a “free spirit,” had other ideas, ones that ran contrary to lots of things, and he proved his point out on that mound, throwing that high, hard fastball up in the strike zone, trusting his pinpoint control, that late movement on his heater to get him out of jams.

Along with Baltimore’s Jim Palmer, he was one of the first big American League hurlers to win pitching up in the zone. Imagine being 55-15 over two seasons? Heck, if you can get another 40-45 wins or so from the rest of your staff (figures out to about 4 wins apiece), you could win yourself a pennant. The Tigers narrowly missed a pennant in the Red Sox’ “Impossible Dream” season of 1967. But in 1968, they beat the Cardinals and Bob Gibson to win it all.

On August 16 of that year, I was sitting inside Fenway Park watching McLain shut-out my Boston Red Sox from my seat in the centerfield bleachers (which then cost a buck).

He allowed just seven hits, whistling through a complete game in 2:36. He completed 28 of his 41 starts that season, including 15 of his last 16 starts. That night in Boston, he always seemed to be ahead in the count, he challenged hitter after hitter, even though it was a warm August night and he’d already thrown more than 250 innings by that point. He was effortless, focused, just about unbeatable.

As a high school pitcher myself, I studied McLain’s flawless delivery, that high leg kick with his left leg, his toe pointed towards the center of home plate. To teach myself to point my left toe at home plate like Denny, I tied a shoelace around my foot, underneath my spikes. Which, after a while, I was able to do, land on that left leg with the pointed toe.

But the baseball didn’t come out of my hand the way it did out of Denny’s. In that magnificent, record-setting 31-win, 1968 season, nobody had the ball come out of their hand like it did out of Denny McLain’s. It was a pitching performance for the ages, for all time, never to be seen again.

FREE SPIRIT — Denny McLain allowed Mantle’s 535th (next to last) career home run on September 19th. A sentimental guy, he grooved one for the Mick, then autographed the picture! When you own the game — like he did that season — you can show a little charity.

(Thanks to Bob Every for the photo)