Rose Affair Stirs Memories of McLain

This time, the restaurant is Jonathan’s Cafe in Franklin, Ohio. The characters are named Ronald Peters, Thomas Gioiosa, Paul Janszen and Michael Fry and the star is Pete Rose.

Nineteen years ago, it was the Shorthouse Steak House in Flint, Mich. The characters were Clyde Roberts, Jiggs Gazell, Ed Schober and Ed Voshen and the star was Denny McLain.

Now, baseball is investigating “serious allegations.” Then, it was reviewing “certain off-field activities.”

Just like now, there was a new commissioner. Just like now, the major allegations first surfaced in Sports Illustrated. Just like now, there was a grand jury.

No one knows what will happen to Pete Rose. What happened to Denny McLain is well documented.

“All I can tell you is that I received the most horrible advice in the history of the world,” McLain said this week. Just 3 1/2 years after his troubles began, 5 1/2 years after he won 31 games, Denny McLain was out of baseball.

He’d been a star after Detroit won the 1968 World Series. Big money, big cars, jetting around in his private plane. Life in the fast lane.

On Feb. 17, 1970, Sports Illustrated said he’d been in the wrong lane. He was the cover story, with bold headlines in yellow-and-red letters:

“Denny McLain and the mob”

“Baseball’s Big Scandal”

McLain was alleged to be a gambler and a bookmaker and SI reported that he associated with Mafiosi linked to Tony Giacalone, whom the magazine said was an enforcer for Joe Zerilli, then Detroit’s crime boss.

Some of it was true, McLain later admitted in his book, “Strikeout: The Story of Denny McLain.”

“I was gambling in 1967,” he wrote. “The number of my bets was fairly high, but the stakes weren’t--usually only $50 on each football or basketball game. No baseball? I never bet on baseball! . . . Betting baseball is a losing proposition, even if you’re inside the game.”

The story of McLain’s downfall began in 1963, when he became friends with Edwin K. Schober, a marketing vice president for Pepsi-Cola Metropolitan Bottling Co. Inc. in Detroit.

As McLain achieved prominence on the field--he was 16-6 in 1965 and 20-14 in 1966--he began to start business ventures. Among other things, he played the organ at nightclubs. Six days after the World Series, he was playing a Las Vegas hotel.

One of those nightclubs he performed at was the Shorthouse Steak House, 50 miles northwest of Detroit. A bookmaker named Charles Roberts ran it. McLain got to know Roberts and together with Schober, began placing bets with him.

“Winning is great, but for me, the appeal of gambling was the excitement,” McLain wrote. “I loved the action. Having a monetary interest, regardless of the amount, in the outcome of a game made it that much more exciting to watch. If I lost, well, at least I had fun in the process. And if I won, so much the better.”

Early in 1967, McLain and Schober decided they would rather be bookies than bettors, and agreed to become partners in a new bookmaking operation with Roberts and Jiggs Gazell, whom Roberts was betting with.

McLain invested $5,700, but a short time later found out that he and Schober were victims of a con job by Roberts and Gazell. McLain told Schober he was quitting.

Schober later called McLain to tell him that Hubert Edward Voshen placed a bet with their operation on Williamston Kid, a 19-2 shot who won the eighth race at Detroit Race Course on Aug. 4, 1967. Voshen won $46,600 and Schober said they had to pay him off. McLain, surprised that the venture was still going, lent Schober some money and never heard about it again.

SI said that Voshen got Giacalone to talk to McLain, and said that Giacalone was rumored to have stepped on McLain’s toes, causing an injury. McLain denied it, saying he hurt himself in a clubhouse rage after Boston knocked him out on Sept. 18, 1967, and further aggravated the foot at home that night. McLain didn’t pitch again until the final day that season.

In any event, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn found out that the story was coming out and called McLain to New York for a meeting on Feb. 13, 1970.

“He said, ‘Just tell us what went on and we’re all going to get on with the rest of our lives,”’ McLain remembered this week. “We did, except he suspended me. I still think he lied to us.”

Kuhn, who took office on Feb. 4, 1969, issued a statement after the meeting saying he was “reviewing certain off-field activities” that “did not involve the playing or outcome of baseball games.”

Six days later, Kuhn took action. “Mr. McLain’s involvement in 1967 bookmaking activities and his associations at that time leave me no alternative but to suspend him from all organized baseball activities pending completion of my review of the situation,” Kuhn said.

For six weeks, McLain was an outlaw, not knowing what would happen next.

“He suspended me before everything was even done,” McLain says now. “Kuhn reacted to the pressure of the press. There was no question about it, Bowie was one of those guys very interested in pleasing in the press.”

McLain thinks Rose is fortunate that Kuhn’s no longer in baseball. “Had Bowie been in office, Pete would be suspended.” McLain said. “Pete was very lucky (Peter) Ueberroth was the commissioner. And all the things I hear about (A. Bartlett) Giamatti are positive.”

Baseball players didn’t have a grievance system then like they do today. It was adopted on May 24, 1970, three months too late for McLain. Still, his lawyers told him not to get the Major League Baseball Players Assn. involved or to contest Kuhn’s action in court.

“I was talked out of it by my attorneys,” McLain recalled. “I hadn’t been around the block enough to realize what rights I had. At that point in time, I hadn’t sampled the real world, it was still the candy world.

“My attorneys felt they wanted to get this matter behind us as quickly as possible. I was told I should not talk to Marvin Miller. My lawyers in Detroit, they told me that if I even talked to Marvin, I would lose my representation.”

Miller, now retired and a consultant to the players’ association, said that he tried to change McLain’s mind. “When the news broke, I met with Denny and talked to him about what his rights were without getting into the facts of the case with him. I explained that it was not just a question of guilt or innocence. That if he is found guilty of what has been alleged, that doesn’t mean that the punishment will necessarily be upheld. In other words, the punishment still has to fit the crime. Denny decided for his own reasons not to appeal it.”

On April 1, Kuhn decided to suspend McLain until July 1. He essentially found him innocent of any specific wrongdoing.

“There is no evidence that McLain in 1967 or subsequently has been guilty of any misconduct involving baseball or the playing of baseball games,” Kuhn wrote in his decision. “McLain’s association in 1967 with gamblers was contrary to his obligation as a professional baseball player to conform to high standards of personal conduct, and it is my judgment that this conduct was not in the best interests of baseball. It therefore must be made the subject of discipline.”

McLain couldn’t believe it. He still doesn’t. “I was suspended for association,” he said this week, sounding angry as he thought of Kuhn. “That was the most incredulous part about the entire deal. You’re suspended because you had drinks with a guy. Or because you bet with a guy. That’s what I don’t understand. That’s what never made any sense at all.”

Kuhn, who hasn’t spoken with McLain since, still says he made the correct call.

“I never had any question,” he said this week. “I’ve always thought that it was the right decision. I still do. Fair, both ways.”

He got criticized for leniency and for harshness, probably because all previous gambling suspensions had been clear-cut decisions.

“I think the McLain case was essentially new territory,” Kuhn said. “Nothing was on-point. It was pretty much its own kind of case.”

Miller, looking back, believes an arbitrator or a judge would have blocked Kuhn.

“I think the entire suspension would likely have been reversed. There are some arbitrators who are terrible. I can’t think of any arbitrator who would hold up that suspension.”

McLain decided not to contest it. He was not indicted by the grand jury and went 3-5 after he came back. He was suspended twice during the remainder of the season -- once for dumping water on two reporters and again for carrying a gun on an airplaine.

After the season, he was traded to Washington and went 10-22 in 1971. In 1972, he went 4-7 for Oakland and Atlanta and March 26, 1973, three days before his 29th birthday, the Braves released him.

McLain finished with a record of 131-91 -- 114-57 before the suspension, 17-34 after it. He got into trouble with the law and served 29 months of a 23-year sentence for racketeering, extortion, conspiracy and cocaine possession. Now he’s on probation but he says he couldn’t be happier.

He also has some thoughts on Rose’s plight.

“I’m just praying it’s not as bad as it appears to be,” McLain said, speaking with admiration. “Even if it is, I don’t care what he’s done, it should not effect his eventual induction into the Hall of Fame.”