While I remain a steadfast fan of Denny McLain’s Capitol LP “Denny McLain At The Organ”, it appears the former 30 game winner (and two-time con) might call his latest tune, “Burying My Old Teammates”. Repoz helpfully emailed a link to Bill McGraw’s Detroit Free Press piece concerning McLain’s latest autobiography. œI Told You I Wasn™t Perfect, is Denny’s 3rd attempt at telling his life story — has Nelson Mandela written 3 autobiographes?
While the new book traces McLain™s life from receiving childhood beatings from his dad to sucking up to John Gotti Jr. in prison, it also is sure to raise eyebrows among Tiger fans for the way McLain flays some of his teammates from the 1968 championship team. That was almost 40 years ago, but McLain™s wounds still seem raw.
McLain knocks Al Kaline for slamming his bat into the rack and injuring himself in the middle of the ™68 pennant race. Some of the players, and even manager Mayor Smith, McLain says, didn™t think Kaline should have started the World Series.
œAs respectfully as I can say about a Hall of Fame player, Kaline wasn™t the most loved SOB in the clubhouse, and we did win the pennant without him, McLain writes. œOur guys resented Kaline for turning down a $100,000 salary when 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.
McLain calls Jim Price, the Tiger broadcaster, a butt-kisser, œback-stabbing (expletive) and œone of the laziest, most untalented guys I™d ever seen in the major leagues.
The late Smith, the Tigers 1968 manager: œMayo drank so much that it usually took him three or four innings to sober up and get his head into the game.
Mickey Lolich? œOverwhelmingly jealous, McLain writes. œI was the last guy he wanted to see win 30 games.
Even many hard-core baseball fans have forgotten the incident in which McLain, in his private plane, left Lolich stranded at the 1969 All Star game in Washington. McLain remembers. He brings up how Lolich complained about the slight to reporters.
Writes McLain: œWhat a (expletive) baby, that Lolich. There are a thousand flights a day from Washington to Detroit. The league paid for his first-class transportation back to Detroit, and Mickey should have kept his mouth shut.
McLain even gets in a poke at Erma Bombeck, the late humor columnist. Erma Bombeck? He slams her for being a boring guest on his radio show.
Yeah, that’s not going to go very far, trashing a guy like Kaline when you’re viewed generally as something just this side of a slug in Detroit for your post-baseball activities.
He’s right about Jim Price, though.
Since when does anybody believe a word Denny McLain says. He is a many-times convicted con man. He would say Pope John Paul used steroids if he thought it would put a dollar in his pocket.