To think they even wrote a song about this guy at one point, and held him in such high esteem to where he was a valuable team member.
Grudges that are not healed, or even addressed, always bubble to the surface. Denny McLain, the last pitcher to win 30 games in a season, has outdone and ostricized himself from the baseball community even more with the release of a new book, I Told You I Wasn't Perfect.
This appears to be one book that can be judged by title alone - never mind the rest of the cover. We know that McLain crashed hard in the 1980s, even overlooking his suspicious bookmaking activities of the late 1960s. He's been in the federal pen on two different occasions, but this time he is more stingy than ever. Why a printing company even took on such a ridiculous project is beyond me; I believe it wasted precious ink.
McLain still stands behind his statements & grudges, and continues to hide behind them, unwilling or afraid to face confrontation, restitution, and chances to bury the hatchet and forget the past. He is still very much living in the past, and to him, the past appears to have happened yesterday versus forty years ago.
On Al Kaline: "Our guys resented Kaline for turning down a $100,000 salary when (club president & GM) Jim Campbell offered to put him on par with the top players in the game. While the media played him up as a hero for being so modest, we all knew that it cost us serious dough."
Excuse me? For years, I applauded Kaline's decision to turn down that salary. Yes, he was modest in his reasoning, but something like that would be unheard of today. This is someone putting the team's needs before his own. And how could it cost the Tigers "serious dough"? Doesn't a lower contract value save the team dollars? Would fans have deserted Kaline because he didn't take the $100,000? This simply doesn't make sense - it made Kaline even more of a working man's hero.
On Mickey Lolich: "Overwhelmingly jealous. I was the last guy he wanted to see win 30 games."
Did Lolich ever say that? McLain thought that on his own and created his own inter-team rivalry. Lolich was a decent man and very popular; I can't imagine him complaining bitterly about McLain's role on the team.
McLain's career fizzled quickly after that magical 1968 season; it ended before the 1972 season began. Casual observers may wonder why Lolich gets more of the ink when it comes to remembering past Tigers of that '68 team, while McLain seems to fall into the pack.
The book will speak for itself on that reasoning -- no pun intended there, Denny.
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