Putting aside for a moment the plausibility of anyone listening to Adam Schein’s radio show, Tigers reliever Joe Nathan claimed Wednesday he was suffering from a dead arm. Speaking with 730AM’s Fred Heumann, the following day, veteran starter / organist Denny McLain asked, “what the hell is a dead arm?”
“Get a shot of cortisone, put a little dirt on it, Joe, kick yourself in the ass and get out there,” said McLain, baseball’s last 30-game winner. “I am tired of excuses. Everybody’s got an excuse in this game today. Get dressed, go play. They’re paying you tens of millions of dollars to play the game and you want to come up with a dead arm?”
“Let’s step up, let’s be a man, let’s retire from the game because our arm is tired and let’s find another guy who can pitch, if your arm is dead,” he said. “That’d be the right thing to do, wouldn’t it? Just walk away from the game, leave $30 million on the table and go home? Wouldn’t that be the right thing to do if you can’t help us?”