Denny McLain Is a First-Ballot Choice for Hall of Shame

After sleeping in a cockroach-infested cell, after having a 25-pound fire extinguisher crashed down on his skull by a fellow convict, after putting his family through hell and thinking of killing himself, Denny McLain declared, “I’ve learned my lesson. I may be thickheaded, but I’m not stupid. You’ll never find me anywhere close to a criminal situation again.”

That was 1988. On Friday in a Detroit court, a conviction for money laundering, conspiracy, theft and mail fraud came down against McLain, 52. A pitcher who was baseball’s last 30-game winner, he has reestablished himself as one of life’s biggest losers.

I grew up a few miles from Dennis McLain in a south suburb of Chicago, and was living in Detroit on March 16, 1985, when this man who won a World Series there, plus the American League’s most valuable player and Cy Young awards, was handed a 23-year federal prison sentence after being indicted for racketeering, conspiracy, extortion, possession of cocaine with intent to distribute and conspiracy to import cocaine.

I saw him disgrace his father-in-law, Lou Boudreau, a man I admired so much, whose Hall of Fame induction in Cooperstown, N.Y., I was proud to attend. I felt so sorry for Boudreau’s daughter, Sharyn, who had to file for bankruptcy, sell her diamond engagement ring and even sell, for $6,500, replicas of her husband’s MVP and Cy Young awards to make ends meet, after the originals had been lost in a fire.

When he got out of jail, McLain made money any way he could. He even did TV commercials for a Michigan car dealer, watching a license plate fall off, picking it up and, with a cheesy grin, saying, “You know, I made this one.”

But this money was made legitimately, at least, unlike the money McLain made as a numbers runner when he was 15 years old, or the money he made as a gambler and bookmaker while playing for the Tigers in 1967, a year before he pitched them all the way to the World Series.

Money meant everything to Denny McLain, whose baseball career ended when he was only 28. He hustled golf, once winning $16,800 in a single day from a sucker who was equally sick. McLain played baccarat in Atlantic City, taking home $27,000 in one sitting. He would later lie on the floor of a car and cover his head, while helping a man with $320,000 in a suitcase flee to an island to avoid prosecution. For that help, McLain demanded the entire 320 grand.

He did anything for money. Playing for the Tigers once, a $100 interview payment from a TV postgame show was so important to him, McLain called out tips to the opposing team’s catcher, John Roseboro, on how to pitch to teammate Norm Cash, just so Cash wouldn’t be the game’s hero and get the TV interview.

Afterward, McLain slapped the $100 bill on his forehead and strutted in front of Cash, who did a slow burn.

He craved money so much, McLain admitted of himself, “Samson had his Delilah, McLain had green pieces of paper with pictures of presidents. Some people use drugs or booze or gambling to get high. I get off on making money.”

So, it doesn’t surprise me a bit that McLain is in hot water again, even though he swore up and down that the 2 1/2 years he ended up serving in the slammer would teach him a lesson he would never forget. This time he has been convicted of looting $3 million from a meat-packing company’s pension fund, and faces up to 20 more years behind bars.

I thought of Denny McLain, growing up, the way many today must think of Nolan Ryan, or Roger Clemens. He could throw a baseball with deadly heat and accuracy, and I knew kids who went to high school at Mount Carmel who simply couldn’t believe how good this guy was. We weren’t surprised at all when the White Sox gave him $17,000 to sign, much of which McLain used to immediately buy two Pontiac LeMans cars.

His dad died at 37, probably from the strain of working two jobs. Denny was privileged, however, to gain a distinguished father-in-law in Boudreau, who had managed in the majors at 24 and was so popular in the Chicago area as a broadcaster with the Cubs. Oh, how ashamed Denny claimed to be that he put Lou and his daughter through humiliation and debt.

After going to jail, McLain said, “I hope and pray I’ve embarrassed him [Boudreau] for the last time.”

Denny McLain drove around Detroit with a handgun under his car seat, kept company with common hoods who transported drugs, then eventually ended up in a Florida cell, where it scarcely mattered that his belt was taken from him, McLain said, because “I was too fat to hang myself.” When he wasn’t punching out fellow inmates, he wept into the phone to his wife, who held their family together best she could, waiting for him to get out.

Unfortunately, he did.