But McLain had little to back up that amazing season in 1968. The following year saw him win a more-than-respectable 24 games, but the Tigers were clearly not the same team, and finished second in the league. In 1970, the injury and trouble-plagued hurler pitched a total of eight games for the Tigers, winning only three. 1971 saw McLain losing 22 games for the Washington Senators, to whom he had been traded by a Tiger organization that had tired of his grandstanding and anti-authoritarian tactics. By 1972, his arm was completely thrown out, and he finished his 10-year major league career with a combined 4-7 record for the Oakland A's and the newly relocated Atlanta Braves.

McLain's single season record, impressive to be sure, is virtually his only legacy to the Tigers and to baseball itself. He blazed his way to the 1968 American League MVP and Cy Young Awards, and tied with Baltimore's Mike Cuellar for the Cy Young in 1969. By then, baseball was nearly history for McLain. But he still had so much life left to live, and so much more trouble to instigate.

Dennis Dale McLain was born in Chicago, Illinois on March 29, 1944. His Mt. Carmel High School record stood at an impressive 38-7, and based on that performance garnered a contract with the Chicago White Sox at the age of 18. Unfortunately for the White Sox, they were flush with right-handed mounders and waived McLain, who was snapped up by Detroit. After going 18-7 in the minor leagues, McLain was moved up and began his major league career on September 21, 1963. Starting in 1965, McLain enjoyed a five-year stretch of winning seasons, including his first 20-game season in 1966 and his record breaking 1968.

The Tigers had experienced a heartbreaking finish in 1967, its first year under the guidance of manager Mayo Smith. The team's hopes for the American League pennant came down to the last day of the season, but the Tigers lost to the California Angels and then had to count on a Minnesota victory to eliminate the Red Sox and secure the AL championship. But the Twins lost to Carl Yastrzemski and the Red Sox, and the Tigers had the off season to contemplate their disappointing finish.

In fact, the '67 season had been a sidebar in Detroit compared to the racial unrest that had gripped the city for most of the summer. After full-fledged rioting in July, much of downtown Detroit had been controlled by the National Guard, with many neighborhoods under strict curfew. Although the Tigers were in contention up to the very last day of the regular season in the fall of 1967, large blocks of empty seats in Tiger Stadium were a regular occurrence.

But all of that changed in 1968. The Tigers jumped out to an early lead in the American League that they would hold virtually all season. By mid-July, all of Detroit was swept up in a wave of Tigermania. Along the way, the magnificent Tigers of '68 would amass some of the most impressive statistics in the club's (and in baseball's) history. Of the 37 games that Denny McLain pitched, 28 were complete, and among his 31 victories, six were shutouts. Jim Northrup set a major league record by hitting three grand slams in a single week, two of them in a single game. Gates Brown posted an amazing .462 as a pinch hitter during the season. After losing to the Angels on a season-ending double play in 1967, second baseman Dick McAuliffe didn't hit into a single ground ball double play the entire 1968 season. Perhaps the single most jaw-dropping stat of 1968 was the fact that the Tigers came from behind to win in their last at bat 28 times during the regular season, on the strength of some of the greatest names in Tiger history: Al Kaline, Norm Cash, Bill Freehan, and Willie Horton.

But for all of the astounding team stats, it was Denny McLain's single-season record that made the headlines, and was the thing that Tiger fans were talking about most loudly. To put McLain's incredible feat in perspective, look at the Tigers' remaining pitching staff. Although Mickey Lolich was the club's #2 arm, he'd had a lackluster 14-13 year in '67, and '68 found him in the same doldrums, finishing the year with a relatively meager 17 wins (although his spring starts had been diminished due to his absences for National Guard duty). The Tigers' other starting ace, the hard throwing Earl Wilson, managed only 13 wins. Between them, Lolich and Wilson were one game shy of McLain's season total.

The stage was set for what was to become one of the greatest World Series of all time. Bob Gibson had followed his stellar '67 season by throwing three complete-game victories in the Series and leading the Cards to the championship over the Red Sox. He looked primed to repeat that scenario as he brought his almost non-existent 1.12 season ERA into the '68 Series and proceeded to fan a Series record 17 Tiger batters in Game One, defeating McLain 4-0 in his fifth consecutive complete game victory in a World Series (one in 1964 and three in 1967). Lolich brought things back to even with an 8-1 victory in Game 2, but Wilson lost his only Series start to Ray Washburn in Game 3, and Game 4 went to Gibson and the Cards as well, as McLain's second appearance was worse than his work in the Series opener, getting shelled so badly that Smith benched him after three desultory innings, eventually losing 10-1 as Gibson upped his complete game Series total to six. The Tigers' chances seemed slim at best, hopeless at worst. Lolich once again stepped up and pitched his second complete game for the dramatic 5-3 win to keep the Tigers alive and send the Series back to St. Louis for the final two games. As stunning as the 1968 season had been for McLain, the World Series found him in spectacularly mediocre form, but he finally made up for his two losing starts by decisively winning 13-1 in Game 6 to tie the Series. The Tigers seemed to come back to life as well, staking McLain to a 12-run lead early, led by the explosive Jim Northrup, who pegged his fifth grand slam of the season in Detroit's 10-run third inning romp. And so it was left to Mickey Lolich, who had been all but forgotten in the excitement of McLain's Cinderella season, to provide the firepower in Game 7, holding the Cardinals scoreless through six innings. Gibson, the Cardinals' ace, did exactly the same to the Tigers, with the pair making baseball history again for the longest period of scoreless innings in a deciding game in the Series (to that time), and Gibson fanning eight more to finish with a Series record 35 strikeouts. But Jim Northrup's controversial two-run triple in the eighth‹some said it was a legitimately hit ball, others contending that outfielder Curt Flood had misplayed it by jumping late‹was all the lead that Lolich required to nail down the game and the championship as the Tigers accomplished the impossible by coming back from a two-game deficit and winning the final two Series games in St. Louis.

With all that McLain achieved in 1968 - 31 regular season victories, the AL MVP, a World Series win, the Cy Young award - he still found himself upstaged at season's end by paunchy poster-boy Lolich, who had one of the greatest pitching Series in history (appropriately at the close of a season that came to be known as "The Year of the Pitcher"), and was awarded the Series MVP for it. Lolich threw three complete game victories, a feat matched only twice before (Lew Burdette in 1957 and Gibson in 1967) and never again since. He fanned 21 and posted an ERA of 1.67 for the Series. Lolich even found a way to help at the plate, as he launched his only major league home run in Game 2 to help his own cause, and tapped the single that sparked the Tigers' come-from-behind victory in Game 5, giving him a .250 Series batting average, better even than usually reliable catcher Bill Freehan.

With his less than stellar performance in the Series, McLain began his swift slide into oblivion, perhaps facilitated by his not-so-friendly rival to Lolich's late success. To be fair, McLain had played hurt most of his career, and in 1968, he was given massive doses of cortisone to alleviate the pain in his shoulder and arm, much more than any responsible club would administer today. But most of McLain's troubles were self-inflicted. His legendary case per day consumption of Pepsi had an impact on his waistline, and his slower reactions in the '69 season were proof that he was slipping. As a further diversion, McLain had begun a recording career, signing to Capitol Records and releasing an album of instrumentals in the 1968 off-season, played on the Tiger Stadium organ, which led to a series of live appearances in Las Vegas. There was still enough of the old bravado to earn McLain a tie for the Cy Young, but as far as the Tigers were concerned, they had done all they could for the eccentric pitcher.

As a counterpoint to his 24 wins and club record nine shutouts in 1969, McLain's 1970 season was marked by three suspensions levied by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn and the Tigers themselves, for dousing a couple of sportswriters with ice water, for carrying a loaded pistol into a clubhouse, and for associating with known gamblers, the latter charge resulting in an ongoing federal investigation. On the eve of the 1970 World Series, Tigers president Jim Campbell dealt McLain to the Senators for Eddie Brinkman, Aurelio Rodriguez, and pitcher Joe Coleman, in a trade that would ultimately make Detroit a contender again in 1972.

McLain's misadventures outside of baseball have gone the furthest to overshadow his one big season of glory. His legendary weight gain (the former beanpole swelled to over 300 lbs. at one point), his arrest for cocaine possession, his conviction on racketeering and extortion charges, and his prison sentence in the mid-'80s all combined to make him the only Cy Young winner to ever do hard time. When McLain was freed due to his successful appeal on the grounds that he didn't receive a fair trial, he vowed to walk the straight and narrow. He managed to do just that for awhile, scoring a talk radio gig, sharing stories about the Tigers, and his life, and "the season."

Then, in 1993, McLain and business partner Roger Smigiel bought the Peet Packing Company in Chesaning, Michigan, and allegedly set about to systematically strip the company's pension fund and divert some of the funds for their personal use. Two years later, the Peet Packing Co. was bankrupted, and the pair were brought up on charges of embezzlement. Smigiel and McLain were both convicted of conspiracy, fraud, and embezzlement, and sentenced to seven and eight years in prison, respectively. McLain is currently being held in McKean Federal Prison in Lewis Run, Pennsylvania awaiting trial on federal charges in New York that he concocted a phony telephone card swindle with John "Junior" Gotti, son of Gambino family boss John Gotti.

The stories that surround Denny McLain's brief and flamboyant career are the stuff of legend. Consider these brief anecdotes:
€McLain missed the '67 pennant race because of a sprained ankle that he said had occurred when his leg went to sleep and he stumbled getting off the sofa. Years later, it was revealed that a local mobster had crushed McLain's foot to remind him of a gambling debt.
€ In the Tigers' last meeting with the Yankees in 1968, with the Tigers leading 6-1, McLain signaled the location of the next pitch to Mickey Mantle so that he could hit a home run, thereby avoiding posting the lowest seasonal home run total of his career. A flustered Mantle fouled off the first telegraphed pitch, but motioned for McLain to repeat the pitch in the same area. McLain obliged and Mantle hit a rocket into the right field seats.
€ He regularly chastised fans in the local media for being fairweathers, and endured a great deal of abuse from the stands because of it.
€ McLain once beat first baseman Norm Cash for the right to be a guest on WJR's "Star of the Game" radio appearance immediately following the game, a gig that paid $100. McLain then went back to the clubhouse with the $100 pasted to his forehead to taunt Cash.

By contrast, Mickey Lolich went about his job relatively quietly, worked hard and continued to pitch for the Tigers until 1975 as he eventually set a number of club records that stand today. He ultimately parlayed his local fame into establishing a small pastry shop in Lake Orion, just north of Detroit. A sad and telling postscript to Lolich's career came when the club provided the former pitcher with complimentary tickets to the Tigers' home games during the 1984 World Series against San Diego. The problem was that the Tigers organization had given Lolich tickets in the nosebleed section of the upper deck. The Most Valuable Player of the 1968 World Series, the player that was the most instrumental in the Tigers' triumph against the Cardinals, had the worst seats in the house.

As usual, McLain's travails overshadowed Lolich's in the mid-'80s, as McLain inspired countless headlines in Detroit and beyond for his alleged misdeeds. Although he never quite connected with either the Detroit fans or his teammates, Denny McLain had all of the ingredients for being one of the game's most eccentric and successful pitchers. He wound up being merely one of its most notorious.

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