The Detroit Tigers couldn’t have known what they were getting when they made a rather innocuous waiver claim of a 19-year-old right-handed pitcher from the Chicago White Sox on April 8, 1963. But they got one of the great characters of the game in Denny McLain. Often, he didn’t show up at the ballpark when he wasn’t scheduled to pitch. He drank a case of Pepsi every day. He liked to gamble. After tossing his obligatory two innings in the 1968 All-Star Game (in which, somehow, he wasn’t the starter), he left the Astrodome and caught a flight to Las Vegas. He loved to play the Hammond organ and fancied himself more as a musician than a ball player. This talent resulted in a recording contract, two vinyl record albums (kids, ask your parents), and an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. He craved celebrity and money. It was alleged that he got involved with some shady characters. He was difficult and self-centered, and had a short fuse. Oh – and in 1968, he became baseball’s first 30-game winner in 34 years, a feat no pitcher has accomplished since.
McLain didn’t spend a lot of time in the minors. He made his major league debut at age 19 on September 21, 1963, pitching a complete game and beating the White Sox, 4-3, while giving up just one earned run. The next season, he posted a 1.53 ERA and 0.949 WHIP in eight games at Triple-A Syracuse. With seemingly nothing more to prove in the minors, he was in the majors to stay by June 1964. He had a breakthrough season in 1965, when he went 16-6 with a 2.61 ERA and 1.071 WHIP. He reached the coveted 20-win plateau in 1966, but with 14 losses, and made his first All-Star team. But across 1966 and 1967, his ERA ballooned to 3.86, and he led the majors in surrendering home runs in both seasons.
In addition to the decline in production, McLain was starting to drive his manager, the staid Mayo Smith, crazy. The 1967 Tigers were involved in the pennant race until the end, finishing 91-71, a game behind the Boston Red Sox. On September 18, McLain suffered a mysterious injury that was never fully explained. He had injured his ankle. Or maybe he dislocated his toes. Perhaps he did it as he kicked his locker in frustration after a rough outing. Or, as McLain explained, he fell off his couch at home after falling asleep. Unable to put weight on his foot, he pitched just 2-2/3 innings the rest of the season. When asked who might pitch in the 1967 World Series should the Tigers make it, Smith suggested any pitcher who could avoid falling off his couch.
1968: The Year of the Pitcher
Thus, there was nothing in McLain’s history to suggest that in 1968, he would go 31-6 with a 1.96 ERA and 0.905 WHIP while winning both the American League Most Valuable Player and Cy Young Awards. But that’s what McLain did, in a season forever known as The Year of the Pitcher. In the AL, Carl Yastrzemski won the batting title with a .301 average. No other qualifying AL batter hit .300. Over in the National League, Bob Gibson of the St. Louis Cardinals was 22-9 with a 1.12 ERA, 0.853 WHIP, and a major-league leading 13 shutouts, while taking that league’s MVP and Cy Young Awards. It’s hard to say which statistic is more astonishing, the microscopic ERA or the nine losses. Surprisingly, like McLain, Gibson didn’t start in the All-Star Game for his league, either. The baseball world would have to wait until the World Series to see the two stars match up against one another.
Problems, Part One
Meanwhile, his newfound stardom didn’t make McLain less eccentric. On September 19, 1968, the Tigers faced the New York Yankees at Tiger Stadium. Mickey Mantle, now an “old” 36, was reduced to playing first base and was in his final year, sitting on 534 career home runs, needing one more to pass Jimmie Foxx on the all-time list. In the top of the eighth inning, the Tigers led, 6-1, and Mantle was coming up to bat for the final time in Detroit. Much to the chagrin of his incredulous catcher, Jim Price, McLain decided to let Mantle hit one out. After a mound conference, Price squatted behind the dish and told Mantle what was up. Not quite believing at first, Mantle watched a couple of hittable fastballs, then hit the next one deep over the right field wall. The next hitter, Joe Pepitone, signalled where he wanted the ball. McLain fired it at Pepitone’s head instead, sending him sprawling.
Besides McLain’s erratic tendencies, Smith had a more pleasant problem. He had four outfielders who deserved to play, and since the Tigers weren’t competing in a softball league, there was room only for three of them. His left fielder, Willie Horton, hit .285/.352/.543 and smashed 36 home runs during the season, finishing fourth in MVP votes. Center fielder Mickey Stanley hit .259/.311/.364, nothing would remind one of Mantle in his prime, but not bad in The Year of the Pitcher, and besides, Stanley was a defensive wizard who won a Gold Glove Award in 1968. Veteran Al Kaline in right field was a franchise icon and a future Hall-of-Fame player. All were right-handed batters.
The Grand Slam Machine
Then there was Jim Northrup. Starting at all three outfield spots during the season, the left-handed hitter garnered a few MVP votes himself, hitting .264/.324/.447, 21 HR, and 90 RBI. Those home runs included an astounding four grand slams.
However, not everything came up roses for Northrup during the 1968 season. From June 8-23, Northrup was just 8-for-67. He saw his average drop from .263 to .225. On June 24, he wasn’t in Smith’s original starting lineup in Cleveland against left-handed pitcher Mike Paul. Northrup begged Smith to put him in the lineup. Thirty minutes before the game, Smith relented.
In the top of the first inning, Northrup came to bat with bases loaded and one out and struck out. “You don’t want to talk your way into (the) lineup and then punch out,” Northrup said as he recalled that day to Mel Antonen of USA Today in 1999. He came up in the fifth inning, again with bases loaded and one out. This time, he connected off right-handed knuckleball pitcher Eddie Fisher for a grand slam. In the next inning, bases were loaded once again for Northrup, this time with no outs. Cleveland manager Al Dark brought in left-handed pitcher Billy Rohr to face him. Northrup jumped on Rohr’s first offering and sent it down the right field line, just fair, and into the stands for another grand slam. With that, he became the sixth major leaguer to hit two grand slams in one game. He told Tom Loomis of The Blade that he wasn’t trying to hit home runs either time. “I haven’t been a hitter for two weeks,” said Northrup. “The way I’ve been hitting, I was only trying to get it out of the infield.” Nor was he bothered by the fact that Rohr was left-handed. “I’ve always hit lefties good,” said Northrup, a better hitter than grammarian. “I batted .313 against them one year and .285 last year.” (Actually, it was .316 in 1966 and .269 in 1967, but his point is well-taken.)
There was another grand slam, five days later, at Tiger Stadium against Cisco Carlos of the White Sox. That gave Nortrup three grand slams in one week, which is still a major league record. Earlier in the year, he had connected for a grand slam off Steve Jones of the Washington Senators.
Problems, Part 2
In the World Series, how would Smith get all four outfielders in the lineup at the same time? It wasn’t a problem in June, when Kaline was out with an injury. Otherwise, Smith would give Kaline or Stanley a start at first base when he wanted to sit left-handed-hitting first baseman Norm Cash against a tough left-hander. But Smith would want Cash, who hit .263/.329/.487, 25 HR, and 63 RBI during the regular season, in the lineup against right-handers Gibson and Nelson Briles, a 19-game winner in 1968. Kaline tried to take the heat off of Smith by graciously suggesting that the other three outfielders deserved to play more than he did. Smith countered with the suggestion that Kaline play third base in place of Don Wert, who hit just .200 during the season. Then, with nine games left in the regular season, Smith came up with another idea.
Now Playing Shortstop: The Center Fielder
Smith decided that the better play was to move Stanley to shortstop. It had been the domain of Ray Oyler, a slick fielder who hit .135 during the regular season. Oyler didn’t record a single hit after July 13 in 1968. He retired after the 1970 season with a career average of .175, the lowest of any non-pitcher in the modern era with at least 1,000 at-bats. Northrup, a good defender who Baseball Reference credits with 18 Fielding Runs Above Average in the outfield, would take Stanley’s place in center field.
Stanley was in his fourth year in the majors and had never played a major league game at shortstop until Smith tried him there on August 23 in a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium. The move shocked baseball observers who knew that Smith was not a risk-taker. In Stanley’s fourth game at shortstop on September 23 at Baltimore, he made two above-average plays but also committed two errors. One of those led to an unearned run, and the Orioles won, 2-1, handing McLain his sixth loss. Stanley worried about costing his teammates the winners’ share of the World Series money with his inexperience at shortstop. None of his teammates were worried, however. Recalling his career to Jim Sargent of Baseball Digest in 2004, Northrup said, “Everyone but our players thought it was a terrible risk to move Mickey Stanley to shortstop, but none of us did, because he was a damn good athlete.” Stanley committed just two inconsequential errors in the Series, while going 6-for-28 with the bat and scoring four runs.
The World Series
The Cardinals also won their division handily. Thus, the pitching rotations were set for the possibility of three Gibson and McLain matchups in Games 1, 4, and 7, although that’s not how it materialized. The two pitching stars pitched against one another in only two games, and neither matchup lived up to the hype. “Denny was tired,” Northrup explained to Sargent. “He’d pitched over 330 innings in 1968. Denny’s arm was sore and tired, and he didn’t have any heat left, no speed.”
Gibson, who threw “only” 304-2/3 innings in 1968, didn’t have those same issues. In Game 1 at Busch Stadium, he set a World Series record by striking out 17 batters. McLain was done after 5 innings, during which he surrendered three runs. The Cardinals took Game 1, 4-0, and there was nothing but praise for Gibson afterward. Kaline told a gaggle of reporters, “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a man pitch a stronger game with such a fastball and breaking stuff.” In an interview room that allowed Gibson to address a group of reporters, he said, “I don’t think they realized I had such a good curveball. I have a feeling their scouting report on me said that I throw mostly fastballs and sliders.”
Game 2 matched the Tigers’ portly left-hander Mickey Lolich against Briles. Pitching in McLain’s shadow all season, Lolich was 17-9 with a 3.19 ERA and 1.105 WHIP. Detroit won Game 2 handily, 8-1, behind Lolich’s complete game. But everybody wanted to talk about Lolich’s hitting, specifically the home run he hit off Briles in the third inning. Lolich would pitch 13 years in the majors and end his career with a .110 lifetime batting average. This was the only home run Lolich would hit in his career, regular season or postseason.
The scene shifted to Tiger Stadium. The Cardinals took Games 3 and 4 easily, the latter being the second Gibson-McLain confrontation. McLain struggled early, lasting only 2-2/3 innings and giving up four runs. The game was played in a steady rainfall and turned into a comedy in the fourth and fifth innings, with the Cardinals ahead, 6-0, and the Tigers trying to invent ways to delay the contest, hoping the umpires would call it off before it became a legal game. It didn’t work. The umpires allowed the game to be played, and St. Louis won, 10-1. Gibson showed he was human by giving up a home run to Northrup for the Tigers’ lone run.
Game 5, another Lolich-Briles matchup, may have been the most talked-about game of the Series, and its most talked-about play happened in the fifth inning. The Cardinals were ahead, 3-2, when their star left fielder, Lou Brock, doubled with one out. Julian Javier followed with a single to left field. Horton fielded the ball cleanly and made a strong throw toward home. Catcher Bill Freehan had the plate blocked. Throughout his long career Brock had always been a stand-up guy, but this time he took it to extremes. He tried to score standing up and was out on a close, disputed play. Observers agreed that had Brock slid, he would have been safe with a key run.
More curious was a decision by Smith in the bottom of the seventh. With St. Louis still ahead, 3-2, Wert led off the inning by striking out against Briles. With the Cardinals now eight outs away from winning the World Series, Smith sent Lolich to take his turn at bat rather than employ a pinch-hitter. Nobody was more surprised than Lolich, who told the media afterward, “When (Wert) went out, I felt sure I was out of the game.” Smith reasoned that the Cardinals had been roughing up his bullpen, and he liked his chances better with Lolich in the game, even if it meant giving up a crucial out. It was the rest of the world’s turn to be surprised when Lolich’s soft fly ball parachuted into shallow right field for a single. In came Cardinals reliever Joe Hoerner, who couldn’t prevent the ensuing Detroit rally. Hoerner promptly surrendered a single, a walk, and two more singles, and the Tigers had a 5-3 lead that Lolich never relinquished.
Returning to Busch Stadium, Smith moved McLain up to start Game 6 against the Cardinals’ Ray Washburn. The Tigers scored two runs in the second inning, and 10 more in the third, highlighted by a grand slam by – guess who? – Northrup. This time McLain finished the game, and Detroit won, 13-1.
Game 7 pitted Lolich against Gibson. St. Louis fans had to feel good with their ace on the mound. Gibson had won Game 7 of the World Series in 1964 and 1967. But Lolich matched scoreless innings with the Cardinals’ ace for six frames. With two outs in the top of the seventh, Gibson may have begun to tire, although he probably would never have admitted it. Cash and Horton singled. Then Northrup hit a line drive to deep center field, directly at and over the head of Cardinals center fielder Curt Flood, himself a Gold Glove recipient. Flood started in, reversed course, hit a muddy spot, and staggered as the ball carried over his head. Northrup had a two-run triple. He scored when Freehan doubled. The teams traded meaningless runs in the ninth. The Tigers won the game, 4-1, and Freehan was the Series MVP.
Aftermath
The Tigers of 1968 consider themselves baseball’s last true champion, as divisional play and playoffs would enter baseball for good in 1969. They continued to field good teams through 1973, but that period coincided with the Orioles dynasty of 1969-71, when they won three consecutive AL pennants. Mayo Smith was fired after a fourth-place finish in 1970 and replaced by Billy Martin. The Tigers had one last hurrah when they won the AL East Division in 1972, but the team was old by the standards of that time, and they lost to the Oakland Athletics in the AL Championship Series.
Stanley retired after the 1978 season, finishing as a career Tiger. McLain and Northrup didn’t have the same experience.
In 1969, McLain posted a record of 24-9, pitching another 325 innings, and won a second consecutive Cy Young Award. But in 1970, all those innings and McLain’s own wild lifestyle caught up to him. He was limited to 14 mostly ineffective games that season, after which McLain and Wert were the key pieces in a trade with the Washington Senators for pitchers Joe Coleman and Jim Hannan and infielders Ed Brinkman and Aurelio Rodriguez. McLain was 10-22 in his only season for the Senators in 1971, leading the majors in losses. In his book, My Turn at Bat, Senators manager Ted Williams cited the trade of a solid pitcher in Coleman and the left side of his infield for what he described as a “washed-up Denny McLain” as one of the reasons for his resignation after the 1972 season.
In 1974, Northrup was traded to the Montreal Expos, who later sold him to the Orioles that same year. Northrup didn’t mind. He hated playing for Martin due to Martin’s habit of taking credit for victories and blaming the players for losses. Northrup played one more year for the Orioles in 1975 and retired.
