Lost Ballparks
Lost Ballparks with Mike Koser is a podcast that transports you back to the golden age of baseball—through the voices of those who lived it. Hear firsthand stories from players, broadcasters, batboys, clubhouse managers, groundskeepers, umpires, and fans who vividly recall what it was like to spend a summer afternoon at Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds, Forbes Field, Yankee Stadium, Comiskey Park, Crosley Field, and many more beloved ballparks now lost to time.
Lost Ballparks
Denny McLain (1968 AL MVP)
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Denny McLain, 2X Cy Young Award winner, 3X All-Star, AL MVP, 1968 World Champion and the last pitcher in the big leagues to win 30 games in a season, is my guest on this month's episode. Wait 'til you hear why his Mom chose not to let him sign with the Yankees! We're also talking about his first hand experiences in some of baseball's iconic ballparks and of course that magical 1968 season for the Detroit Tigers!
And the last picture of the majority baseball in three games of the season. This one's episode.
SPEAKER_06:This is something you've been for today.
SPEAKER_08:If you want to take your shoes off, go ahead, wiggle your toes, and we hope you'll have a cold shape or two throughout the evening.
SPEAKER_00:Denny McLean, welcome to the Lost Ball Parks Podcast. Thanks for doing this.
SPEAKER_08:My pleasure.
SPEAKER_00:So you grew up in Chicago. Did that make you a uh Cubs fan or a White Sox fan?
SPEAKER_07:The craziness was we grew up in the south side of Chicago, but we weren't Sox fans. My dad and mom were both cup big time cub fans. So when I came into the world, it was either be a cup fan or they would have dropped me at the airport and let me go to somebody else.
SPEAKER_00:So uh Where did you end up going to your first major league baseball game as a kid? Was it Wrigley or Kamiski?
SPEAKER_07:Wrigley.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. What do you remember about that day and when that was?
SPEAKER_07:And first of all, we we only went to one game a year because the things were expensive back then. And my dad had just come out of the war and what have you. And um we went to this this game and I forget what year it was. I had to be ten or eleven years old because he died when I was thirteen. And he catches a line drive foul ball down the first baseline. And uh he says, Here, take this and go see Bob Rush. He was a pitcher with the Cubs, and he had the great big high kick, the big leg kick, like I wound up with, and I had the high kick because of Bob Rush. So he rushed got taken out of the game and he walked down to the bullpen, which is against the left field wall. And I'm thinking, I'm not gonna chase this guy all day. I mean, I'm first of all, I'm intimidated to even ask. Anyway, got down and an usher said, Who what's the matter? What are you doing? Where are you sitting? Went through the whole thing. I said, I got a ball here. The Bob Rush hit foul. He was the one that hit it. And my dad sent me down here to get try to get Mr. Rush to sign the ball. Well, he said, Well, there he is. Come on, I'll take you down. So the guy took me down, introduced me to Bob Rush. He shook my hand, signed the ball for me, and we took the ball home. And uh my dad, the last thing he said Sunday night when we got home was, Don't you dare remove this ball from the cup. I said, What? He said, Don't you dare take this ball outside and play with it. It's the last thing he should have said to me. And uh lo and behold, the next day when we got home from uh school, uh all I can tell you is that ball got the poop kicked out of it. So and he was gonna kill me, just kill me. He said, You had his autograph, you had his ball, you had this. I said, Dad, I don't know. I hi uh a ball is a ball. No, it's not, Dennis. So uh that's my greatest memory of the Chicago Cubs.
SPEAKER_00:You had a great high school career, and in May of 1962, one of America's most prominent universities was ready to offer you their first ever baseball scholarship. Is that true?
SPEAKER_07:That's true. Notre Dame uh had come to the house about two weeks before the White Sox came to well, first of all, there were nine or ten teams that came to the house over a period of time. And the two that were remarkable were the um I think it was a Milwaukee baseball team, the Milwaukee Braves then, and the um New York Yankees. And I being a monster Mickey Mantle fan, I wanted to sign with Mantle. They brought a check for 17,500. And uh I told my mother, because my dad was already passed away, and my mother took me in the kitchen and she said, Oh, listen, did you look at his shoes? My mother was a Polish too. And uh I said, Mom, what are you talking about? His shoes. I mean, I'm not looking at his shoes, I'm looking at the check. And she said, He's got a hole in the bottom of his shoes. If he can't buy a new pair of shoes, you think the check is good. So my mom said, Well, we'll call you in a couple of days, we'll let you know what's going on. I mean, I was stunned, I was shocked. I cried when they left the house. I really did. So about uh a day later, the White Sox show up with uh Mr. Short, Nellie Fox was there. They were really trying to do the dog and pony show up. So when they come in, they had a check for 17.5 also. And my mother was checking their shoes out and every other damn thing. And uh all she said was, let me see the check. And she looked at the check and she said, My son would very much like to play with you with the Chicago White Sox. We're from Chicago. We went to Mount Carmel because Mount Carmel was only 10 or 15 minutes away from White Sox Park. So my mother thought the rest of life would be great. Well, then of course to get into the complications of baseball at the back time, how many people you could carry on your major league roster. And I had a pitch against a guy by Bruce Howard the following spring training, and we were told whoever lost would be put in waivers. So I lost one to nothing, gave a home run up to Dave Nicholson. First or second pitch of the game, we hit it 19 miles. So I lose one to nothing. And within 20 minutes after the game was over, the White Sox already got a phone call from Detroit, and a guy Ed Catalinas, who was the head scout, said we're coming to get him in about three hours. Ed Catalinus came in a great, great big black Cadillac. I'd never seen a big black Cadillac before that I could get in, you know, the rest is history.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and listen, Denny, after doing this podcast for a couple of years and having the privilege of talking to so many players, it is really interesting to look back and see how one decision can have such a profound impact on the trajectory of a player's career. So as you talk about Ed Catalinus, he was a chief scout for the Tigers in the 60s and had been traveling throughout the Midwest trying to, I guess, discover discover the next Ty Cobb when one day he literally comes to a fork in the road somewhere in the middle of Iowa, and the decision he would make next would change your life.
SPEAKER_07:Right. Uh going to the east a little bit, he was going to go to Clinton, Iowa. Going to the west, I think he was going to St. Cloud. And um he tells a story when he was still alive. He flipped the quarter. Uh Heads, he was going to St. Cloud, Tails, he was going to uh Clinton, Iowa. Lo and behold, it wound up on Tails, and he came up to see me in Clinton that night. I pitched well that night. And uh he said if he ever becomes available, Detroit's gonna want to try to sign him. So bang, but you know, six months later I catch the biggest break of my life.
SPEAKER_00:And in September of 63, you get called up by Detroit at age nineteen.
SPEAKER_07:Yep, and nineteen, and um they had Charlie Dresson came to me that on a Friday night. Uh, and I've been there about a week, throwing in the bullpen every day.
SPEAKER_00:Charlie Dresson, by the way, the Charlie Dresson. Yeah, great manager from the Brooklyn Dodgers.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, in fact, he brought up Drysdale, he brought up uh Colfax, he brought up a lot of big time big time pitchers. And uh he loved overhand pitchers. Drysdale a little bit out of his realm, but he loved, you know, Colfax threw the ball from the same place I did, except he was left-handed, I was right. And uh Dresson says to me on Friday night, he says, You know what? He says, How'd you like to pitch a ballgame? I said, Oh man, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I mean I'm I'm not serious about it. I don't want to start. Please don't scare the poop out of me. So uh he says, Get some rest. He says, I think you're gonna pitch a little bit tomorrow. So when I get to the ballpark, there's a a little uh Major League ball sitting on my locker. And I looked at it and I said, What do we all get one of these? He says, No, only if you're the starting pitcher. I almost died. I almost died. So I quick ran into the uh office of dressing and I said, Mr. Dresson, there was a ball on my locker. He says, That's that's what you get when you start the game. I said, Am I pitching today?
SPEAKER_14:He says, You sure are, young man. You sure are. Well, thank you, George and I again, everybody. And the McLean gives him a good curve at breaks across.
SPEAKER_07:You know, we went out there and won, uh, I think it was three to two or four to three, something like that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so that's September 21st, 1963. Tell me about first of all, tell me about that day. Um, you talk about what it was like in the clubhouse, but when you walk out onto the field at Tiger Stadium for the first time, what did you think?
SPEAKER_07:Well, I had a couple smart ass remarks because we had older pitchers there. Frank Larry was there, Hankey Gary was there, Don Mossy was there, and they were just trying to hang on. Jim Bunning was still there. And um they started uh nothing nasty, but it wasn't, hey, good to see you. Thanks for coming. It wasn't anything nice. And uh so when I go out there and I and I won four to three at four to three, I think it was. Should have been four to one, but I threw the ball on a butt away into left field and they scored two runs unearned. And after the game, everybody shook my hand, but a few guys, and I'll never forget what the few are and I won't name them now. But they were all they were three or four pitchers that refused to come over and congratulate me. So the irony is all of them were gone the next year in spring training with the exception of one, and then was let go after he screwed up in 67 when he had the bases loaded, nobody out, and they told him, Where are you gonna throw the ball if the ball's hit back at you? And he said, I'm throwing the ball at the home plate, I'll throw it right to freehand. The next hitter hit a one hopper that he threw at the first base. Then Don Mincher came up in the next pitch. This is the last game of the season. And then Mincher hits a three-run home run. We got beaten. We didn't go to the World Series that year.
SPEAKER_00:Where did you warm up that first game at Tiger Stadium?
SPEAKER_07:Right in front of the dugout. That's where the warm-up mound used to be.
SPEAKER_00:And your impressions of Tiger Stadium that first time? What did you think of the ballpark itself?
SPEAKER_07:Well, the only ballpark I've really been in was was Wrigley Field, and that doesn't look like a majestic arena that you find in Rome. Detroit's ball club did. I mean it triple deck, beautiful green. I mean, that's the stuff I remember. Um and the fans were uh just super. And as the game went along, the fans got, you know, I never pitched in front of fifteen or twenty thousand people before. And as the game went longer and longer, the the noise got louder and louder. And for an inning or so I didn't even know why that they were cheering. I had no idea. And then uh uh Gus Triondos, who was a great catcher with the Baltimore Orioles for years, was my catcher that day. And Triondos said, No, no, that's for you, pal, that's for you. All you gotta do is get through two more innings and you'll find out what a c crowd is. We got through it and he uh he was first to see me after the ballgame and it was just uh terrific, just terrific. He helped me he helped me a great deal before the season ended and in spring training the following year for a little bit.
SPEAKER_00:The fans were right up on you at Tiger Stadium too, right? I mean you could the seats were close to the field.
SPEAKER_07:Right. Well most of the ballparks were back then, the old ballparks, they were you know, they went straight up rather than back. And you know, you could have crumpets and tea during the ball game and everybody would hear what you were talking about. Uh and because and those were the only expensive seats, the box seats around the dugouts were the only expensive seats. We were looking at a ticket the other day, uh, with the first game I pitched, we got found a ticket after all these years, and it was for two dollars, box seat.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. By the way, Denny, I've heard from other players that the radio broadcast booth would at Tiger Stadium was so close to the field that players could hear Ernie Harwell talking while they were at the plate.
SPEAKER_07:I don't think it was Ernie we heard. I think it was always the color guy, is neither Ray Lane, who was a very good broadcaster, uh George Kell, K-line.
SPEAKER_13:He hit it a mile.
SPEAKER_07:Uh, but good loud, not bad loud, but just good loud. You could you could hear him. But I don't think we could, you know, we were on the third base side, they were on the first base side, so I don't think there's much uh truth or evidence that we could hear them because unless there was nobody in the park, and the way we were playing uh the next year, there were not a lot of people in the ballpark for a while. But uh they come in Detroit, they come around. They're the best fans in the world.
SPEAKER_00:So by 1964, you're making your first appearance at Yankee Stadium.
SPEAKER_09:Yes, sir. What a day for baseball. I'll tell you, if you're in the area and you don't know what to do, this is the place to do it. Come out here and watch a ballgame at Yankee Stadium. It's a beautiful day, and the weather is lovely, a fine crowd on hand. We're gonna have some action for the next five or six hours.
SPEAKER_00:Do you remember what you did the first time you walked out onto the field at Yankee Stadium?
SPEAKER_07:Well, I think Whitey Ford beat me. Um I mean, here I am. My heroes are the New York Yankees. Yes, I love the Cubs, but Mickey Mannel was my guy. I wore number seven. I hit both from both sides of the plate. I mean, I did everything Mannell did. And uh here I was in Yankee Stadium, and one of the first guys I got to pitch to in the first inning was none other than number seven Mickey Mann.
SPEAKER_06:Mickey Mann the better.
SPEAKER_07:And I just couldn't tell you. I mean, I started shaking when I saw him in the on-deck circle. And they go over every hitter, they tell you how to pitch him and da da da. But you know, when you get worked up as I was, uh with seeing Mantle in the on-deck circle, you you say to yourself, How can I pitch to Mickey Mann? Mickey Mann's gonna beat this garbage I'm throwing there like it's going out of the ballpark. And I don't remember what he actually had, but uh uh Whitey Ford pitched a hell of a game and I know he beat me.
SPEAKER_00:But before the game you went out to the monuments too in center field, right?
SPEAKER_07:Oh yeah. Yeah, I went out to the monuments, I sure did. And you wanna talk about first of all, I went out before there were any people in the ballpark. So it was quiet as a church mouse. And I'm telling you, you could feel whatever it is you could feel being out there by yourself. I mean you could feel it. The history, the memories, the excitement, the things that have happened in that stadium. You thought about all of it standing there looking at everything, and then you turned around and looked from there to home plate, and that looked like it was five miles. But it was just unbelievable. I'll never forget it. I will never ever forget standing in center field in front of those monuments and just wondering, you know, just wondering.
SPEAKER_00:At 22, you were playing in your first All-Star game. That would have been 1966 at brand new, uh brand new at the time, Bush Stadium in St. Louis. St.
SPEAKER_12:Louis, gateway to the west, and the huge gateway arch, made of stainless steel and towering 630 feet high, symbolizes the city's important role in American history. Another great structure in St. Louis's new Civic Center development is Bush Memorial Stadium, scene of baseball's 37th annual All-Star Game.
SPEAKER_00:Facing a National League lineup that included Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Willie McCovey, and you absolutely deal.
SPEAKER_12:And that completes three perfect innings for the sensational Tiger Hurler.
SPEAKER_07:Here's the one great memory. There were a couple of things, but one was this. We had a clubhouse meeting before, which normally is just a little pep talk by the manager. Now, this is my first all-star game, so I don't know what they're gonna do. So Sam Mealey was the manager, and uh Mealey does a little speech and what have you, claps his hands, and I said, Come on, damn it, let's go, let's go. And I'm the only guy that said anything. I mean I'm the only guy in the 40-man roster that says anything. I mean, I'm the lone voice in the clubhouse. These guys were all been there for the most part, the other guys. So I go out and uh I got a little bet with uh Sandy because we were sitting together for 30, 40 minutes before the game, and we made a little wager on the fact that um whoever pitched three perfect innings would win the bet. First of all, Koufax.
SPEAKER_02:There's a lumin coming out to left field coming in quickly as Emmerman and the gets bottom as he climbs for the two spring catch, rolling to the run. Robinson is around first, aluminum second, he'll go for third. Here's the throw from Emer into third of the coming up man, and it is a three-base hit for Brooks Robinson.
SPEAKER_07:So Koufax, he he was done, and he had no chance of winning anything. And uh lo and behold, uh I I went pitched to nine guys and got all nine of them out in a row. But the biggest thing was, and this is the thing I'll never forget, Mays. Willie Mays will lead it off, 277 on the air, facing Denny McLean. I had him 0-2, no balls and two strikes. And then uh Bill all of a sudden got cute because I was told, let Mays hit the ball, let Mays hit the ball. And I'm you know, listen, if you're competitive, I don't care. I'm gonna get him out somehow, some way, I'll get him out. So uh here is Willie Mays, one of the greatest players in history that ever played this game. And the last thing in the world, I freehand told me, and Sam Mealy says, Whatever you do, don't throw Mays any funny pitches. If you get if you get way behind him, just throw him something he can hit. So I uh threw the greatest curveball of my life and struck him out. Stand still.
SPEAKER_02:He got him looking on the upside corner. Looked like a hard slot, but Mays is out.
SPEAKER_07:The first time I met him, he said, Where did the pitch come from? I said, Mr. Mays, and I called him Mr. Mays. I said, Mr. Mays, I've got to tell you something. I think it was the first curveball I threw for a strike in three years.
SPEAKER_00:It's so great. So Diddy, after the 1967 season, you were convinced the Tigers were gonna trade you.
SPEAKER_07:Oh yeah, they were after the 67 season when we should have won the pennant. Well, what happened was we were sailing along in 1967, and in late 67 I got hurt. I hurt my ankle and I couldn't walk. So everybody thought I'd be better in a week or two, and it never ever came around till October, November, December. And uh Jim Campbell, who was our general manager, was so mad at me in a little bit of a degree to with K-line, because K-Line did not have a real good August in September. They were trying to do a deal with the Minnesota Twins most of the winter. They tried to trade K-Line and I for uh Killibrew, Versailles, uh, who was their center fielder? Anyway, that it was a four for two trade. And uh Campbell at the very last minute said, no, I'm not making it, I'm not making it, I don't want to break this team up at this point. Thank God he didn't, because it was the first best trade he ever made, he used to say.
SPEAKER_00:But in 67, you talk about injuries. You had 10 to 12 quarter zone shots during the season for your for your shoulder and and knew you knew that in the offseason you had to do something to strengthen your arm for 68. So so what did you do?
SPEAKER_07:Well, I was always a bowler, and uh I wish I could say I'm so smart, I knew that bowling would help. During the day, uh I w wound up with an interest in a bowling alley. And uh so I would go over there Monday through Saturday, and I would bowl. The first couple of days I was bowling, you know, ten, twenty lines. And then after the first week or two, after I damn near tore everything in my body off on my hand, uh I started bowling at least a hundred lines a day. You know what a line is, it's ten frames.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_07:So uh I did that the entire winter. Went out in spring training in uh sixty-eight and uh Mayo Smith was in the manager and he said, What is going on? I said, What do you mean? He said, Man, you're you're throwing harder than you ever threw. I said, I don't think so. He said the ball he said, believe me, the ball is moving. So anyway, uh you know, the next thing that happens is uh we go out there, we start winning ball games and as they say, uh we we closed it out early. And uh the guys all most of the guys had a great year that year. Besides numbers, our guys were we've been we would have been together most of us five or six years. At the end of five or six years, you should know each other well enough. You should not have to look for a sign to do the right thing. And that's the way our guys were led by K-line. He still is the best hitter I've ever seen after the seventh inning when you're down a run or two, and the best hitter when you're down, period, in a ball game. He was just unbelievable, yeah, with a bat in his hand late in the game.
SPEAKER_00:In 68, you make your second all-star team, and the game was played at the Astrodome in Houston.
SPEAKER_11:The Astrodome, the luxury dome, totally controlled environment in a space age concept to accommodate patrons in absolute comfort without a single view obstructing column.
SPEAKER_00:What what did you think of this new stadium at Houston?
SPEAKER_07:I didn't think much of it. I mean, it's uh because I uh I I've always liked the parks outside. We all grew up playing outside. Nobody played inside. And the thing that I noticed the first thing I did there when I was playing catch was the ball didn't move because we had no wind. There was no breeze left, right, at you, behind you. And I mean that that wind that wind, that breeze makes a big difference in what on how you're pitching. The ball will move if you got enough uh uh breeze. And it doesn't take much breeze to make the ball move. And there was nothing in the stadium, and it was cold. I remember going in there and cold as hell. And uh eventually, you know, once you start pitching, you're okay. But it was cold as hell, I'll tell you.
SPEAKER_00:So after the All-Star game, you and your wife, Bill Frehan and his wife, take a plane to Las Vegas, where you stay for a day, day and a half, and then you fly your wife back home, and then you take a plane to meet up with the team at Metropolitan Stadium in Minnesota, and what a flight.
SPEAKER_07:On that plane we got to about fifteen thousand people climbing up to forty-one, I think it was, and at fifteen thousand the door sprung and killed the pressurization. Of course, we went down to ten thousand feet and flew the airplane all the way to Minneapolis or St. Paul, that was. We flew it all the way to St. Paul at ten thousand feet. They burned a ton of fuel that night, I can tell you that. Okay, when that door pops off Well, uh, after I changed my underwear, um because I'm I'm the only one sitting in the back. And when that door popped, it sounded like a shotgun going off. And uh it was a very unpleasant experience. Uh quick ran up to the front of the airplane. I said, and they knew it, that they had more red lights going on than Christmas. And uh he said, Well, we the door popped. He says, We don't know why, but there's nothing we can do. He said, You want us to land in Chicago and we'll we'll try to fix. I said, No, man, I gotta get to Minneapolis. I said, if we go to Minneapolis like this, let's go. And uh we flew into St. Paul and uh I don't know whatever happened to the door, but I'm sure they got it fixed. And by the way, when I think about it, the two pilots had to be great because that was a serious emergency at the time.
SPEAKER_00:September 10th, the Tigers are in Southern California to play the Angels at Angels Stadium. Anaheim Stadium is just a couple years old at that point, and the big A The Big A was just beyond the left field wall. Yeah, right. And so you're going for win number twenty-nine. The highlight of that week though probably had less to do with baseball and more to do with the pool party. Do you remember that that event?
SPEAKER_07:Well, the the pool party was nuts. Um also I want to remind everybody who wasn't there, and I know there weren't a lot there, but I hit three for four that night, including a triple off the center field wall. So I just thought I'd get that in the record. We won the game the twenty-ninth, and we and we were really closing in on the on the pennant. We were way ahead at that point in time. And we were leaving the next day at ten or eleven, twelve o'clock in the afternoon, and the club decided they were gonna have a party. Glenn Campbell came over, uh, the Smothers brothers were there. I mean, anybody who was on television in a major way, they were at the party. So you had twenty-five major league ball players, and you had some of the biggest Hollywood stars. Ed Sullivan had come into Clubhouse that night. I mean, we had everybody there, and Campbell and the Smothers brothers entertained everybody all night long. They didn't leave till two or three o'clock in the morning. Just the craziest party you ever saw in your life.
SPEAKER_00:So by the way, the Tigers beat the Angels that night 7-2. You go three for four, you pick up win number 29, and at that point you're 29-5 on the season with 304 innings pitched, which meant that you would be back in Detroit at Tiger Stadium on Saturday in front of a national TV audience going for win number 30. Dizzy Dean, who was the last 30 game winner as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals gas house gang, was there. And Sandy Koufax, who I think was part of the NBC broadcast crew.
SPEAKER_07:Great, he was.
SPEAKER_00:He was. So both of them met you before the game. How did what was that conversation like?
SPEAKER_07:Well, I talked to him Friday night for a good hour, hour and a half, just me, him, and uh me, Sandy, and uh uh Dizzy. And we just uh me that w what we did for an hour and a half is tell stories about the season, about the uh events that occurred during the season. A lot of it, Koufax of course had the same experience. The highs, the lows, uh why at times you can't get one run to win one to nothing. I mean, we talked about all of that stuff. And they were great. I I mean Dizzy Dean could have been nasty. I mean put yourself in his shoes. His record had stood for a long, long time. And uh here he was in his early sixties, I think. And uh he when he walked up to me that day for the second time that season, uh, he walked up and says, I really mean this. Congratulations. He says, Whether you win another game or not, it makes no difference. You've did it, you've got him independent, you got him in the World Series. Don't worry about a thing, everything's good. And he was sincere. You can tell when somebody's not and he was extremely sincere. And he stood there for an hour and a half and told us stories. One story after another. And we did it in the bullpen, we did it near around home play with the with the cage. I mean, we did everything you could do for an hour and a half. And then they followed me into the clubhouse uh and and uh Koufax and Dizzy are standing by my locker, and of course everybody's coming over to shake their hands and try to get some autographs. And uh I said, Excuse me, man, I gotta use the bathroom. And I got I got about two feet inside the bathroom area and I turned around and Dizzy was right behind me. I said, Dizzy, there's nothing to see at this point in time. So Dizzy laughed, Dizzy chuckled, laughed a little bit, and turned around.
SPEAKER_00:The A's took a 4-3 lead into the bottom of the ninth that night. Yeah, I know. K-line walks, uh Mickey Stanley singles. Jim Northrop hits uh into a fielder's choice to tie the game, and then Willie Horton steps up to the plate. What do you remember next?
SPEAKER_07:Well, first thing I remember is giving up two home runs to uh Reggie. Uh the fact the first home run I gave him, I had him one and two or oh and two, and hung a curveball and he hit it, he hit it almost to Cleveland.
SPEAKER_10:44,088. McLean fans wondered, along with the millions of TV viewers, if the pressure was getting to Denny when he served up the first of his two home run pitches to Reggie Jackson.
SPEAKER_07:So when he came up the next time, I said, I'm gonna get this son with gun this time. And I'm gonna get him in the same predicament. I'm gonna throw him the same pitch, but this will be a good one. And I threw the next curveball to him, hung up in his eyes again, and this one he hit the buffalo.
SPEAKER_10:And it looked as if Denny's number 30 wouldn't happen today.
SPEAKER_07:What I do remember is the excitement that was generated in the ninth inning. I mean, the place there wasn't anybody sitting down, the whole ballpark was on his feet. As I said earlier, there was one guy you want up when you're behind, and that's L. Kaline. And son of a gun came up again and did his did his thing again. We tied the ballgame. Here comes Horton. Horton hits a line drive over the left fielder's head.
SPEAKER_05:Upfield shallow the pit.
SPEAKER_07:And uh, you know, we went number thirty.
SPEAKER_00:Back then, these ballparks, the dugouts are low. And you jump up.
SPEAKER_07:Oh man, did I ever? I jumped up. This ballparks all had cement dugouts. The cement dugouts were six inches thick. And when we scored the winning run, K-line is sitting next to me, grabs me as we start to go up the stairs, and I'm still jumping up and down like a kangaroo. And I hit my head on the top of the damn dugout, and I was literally knocked out for um a moment or two. And had K-Line not been there holding me, I'd have been on the floor someplace, face down.
SPEAKER_00:Win number 30, first pitcher to collect 30 wins in a season since 1934. Amazing. You wrap up the year with one of the greatest pitching years in baseball history: 31-6, 336 innings pitched. The Tigers win 103, and now you'd meet Bob Gibson and the St. Louis Cardinals in the 68 World Series. Next stop, St. Louis and the World Series. Trailing three games to two, you're the starter for a must-win game six at Bush Stadium in St. Louis.
SPEAKER_13:Number 17, Jenny McLean. Benny McLean on the mount. Look at that record for the season. Earn run average 1.96, 31 and 6.
SPEAKER_00:And you absolutely deliver a gem that night.
SPEAKER_07:Well, we got we got a few runs early, too. It always helps to get a couple of runs ahead. Uh, but uh no, finally, I uh well, the first game, Gibson struck out 17. I mean, listen, all the Saints in heaven weren't gonna beat him in the first game. He just had unbelievable stuff. The next time he pitched. Not so much. And then in in the seventh game he still pitched well. Uh especially the seventh game. But you know, we have Lowish out there who uh who in the beginning of the season was in the bullpen. A lot of people don't remember that. He was in a bullpen for a month or two, maybe three. He just couldn't he didn't know where home play was for two or three months. So uh he finally got himself in jail, started finally pitching well, and he started putting them out there. And his timing for becoming a star was never better than it was that World Series. He was just unbelievable. And uh what people don't realize, Mickey's got one of the great fastballs of all time. Not only is it a velocity of ninety-five, ninety-six miles an hour, but his fastball moves so much and when he's got control of it, Mickey was the the best pitcher in baseball. I mean, I uh the guy I compared to him in today's game when he really was healthy is Mac Scherzer. Scherzer had the best stuff in baseball for a number of years. Every fastball he threw moves six, eight inches. I mean, that it's impossible to hit. That's the reason he was so good. But I'll tell you, this stuff that Lowich had in the seventh game of the World Series was unbelievable.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and the Tigers beat the Cardinals and Gibson in game seven, and you are world champions.
SPEAKER_01:Macabra pops up. Here's Bram. The Trip the New World Champion. And look at Fran picking up Loveless. There's a happy bunch of Tigers. They have beaten the Cardinals four to one, and they have replaced them as the champions of baseball.
SPEAKER_07:Well, first of all, we went it on the road, so we didn't have the uh hoop to law that we could have had. The event that I recall the most, though, is we had two planes uh going into Metro Airport in Detroit from St. Louis, and we uh we were in the first plane, and as we were on a like a mile or two final, the the captain looked up and said I was sitting in the cockpit with him, and he said to me, He said, We're not landing. I said, What do you mean we're not landing? We gotta land. He said, No, no, we're not landing. Look at the look at the runway. The people had broken down the fences and they were all across the airport. They had 30, 40,000 people that had to remove before we could land. So what they did, they sent it. We had a we had another uh airport in Detroit, which we still do call it Willow Run, which used to be the big commercial airport there. It was another 15, 20 miles to the west. So they just directed the airplanes over there to land, so uh so we didn't run out of fuel. That would have really made a bad day.
SPEAKER_00:Incredible. Three-time All-Star Denny, 1968 ALM VP unanimously, by the way, two-time Cy Young Award winner, and uh, as we said, a member of the 1968 world champion Detroit Tigers. Thanks so much for the time.
SPEAKER_07:Thank you. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Life like baseball can sometimes be complicated, and there's much more to the Denny McLean story that I could possibly fit into a 30-minute podcast episode. But one thing is certain. Tigers fans deeply appreciate McLean's historic 1968 season that contributed to their world championship. But many who grew up in Detroit during that era can't help but wonder what McLean's, and by consequence, Detroit's future could have been if not for the controversy and subsequent suspension from Major League Baseball in 1970 for Denny's involvement in a bookmaking business. If you're interested in the complete picture of Denny's life on and off the field and his response to the events surrounding, you might want to check out his book. It's called I Told You I Wasn't Perfect. And oh, by the way, we didn't even have time to mention for the past nearly 60 years, even during his baseball career, Denny McLean has toured the country performing as an accomplished organ player. In fact, what you're hearing right now is Denny playing on the Ed Sullivan show, October 13th, 1968. A man of many talents, to be sure. The Lost Ballparks Podcast is produced by Mike Lapensky, Manny Zablakis, Ryan Beard, Xavier Guerra, Curtis Litzenberger, Mike Dunn, John McBride, Kyle Schmidt, John Carter, and Alex Kemp. If you haven't already, take a second and rate and review Lost Ballparks either on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Believe it or not, that kind of thing really helps when it comes to booking guests. So thanks for doing that. Looking forward to being back with you again on the first Wednesday of next month for another episode of the Lost Ballparks Podcast.
