Golden 30 For Show Biz Denny

As we all know, there are those awkward moments in life when it seems as if the whole world is staring at you. For instance, when you get your school diploma or you get married or have a massive hangover. Although last week none of those things happened to Denny McLain, the Detroit pitcher felt that way nonetheless. In fact, he usually does. But last week was something special, for McLain pitched and won his 29th and 30th (see cover) games of the 1968 season. True, he was only the 46th pitcher in history to do this, but he was the first since Dizzy Dean in 1934, a year in which they were still looking for the Lindbergh ransom money. Hitler had just become Fuehrer and Clark Gable won the Academy Award for It Happened One Night.

Denny McLain bathed happily in all the front-page fuss. Brash and Irish, he often acts as if it were his world and the rest of the people were just passing through. He is also pure show biz from the top of his square head to the soles of his itchy feet. So it was fitting that he spent the first half of his week winning his 29th game against the California Angels within sight of Disneyland and making occasional strafing runs on Hollywood itself. Back home in more prosaic Detroit, McLain completed his 30th victory with an anything but prosaic six-hit melodrama against the visiting Oakland Athletics in front of coast-to-coast, living-color TV. Beforehand he managed to create a kind of ersatz Hollywood of his own right in his suburban Detroit split-level. From morning to night the place was choked with booking agents in sideburns and mod suits and their miniskirted chicks—all of them shouting at each other and over the long-distance phone while McLain, accompanied by the members of his four-piece combo, was down in the den, shattering neighbors' eardrums with his X-77 Hammond organ as ABC-TV cameras cranked away.

Well, that's Denny McLain for you. He may look like a linebacker after 10 years of NFL combat, and he may have the jumpingest fastball in the American League, but it is the incandescent flame of show biz that burns in Denny's heart. Thirty games? Ho-hum. The Ed Sullivan Show? Yeah, baby.

Last things first. Baseball's 30-game winner-to-be got up last Saturday morning around 10:30 and wolfed down the scrambled eggs and sausage his wife Sharyn had just dished up. The neighbors must have thought he was sick or something, because he only spent a couple of minutes on the organ, banging out a thing called Girl Talk that is on his new Capitol Records album. There was barely time for a few phone calls and just one argument with Frank Scott, his agent in New York. Then his brother drove him to Tiger Stadium in the Caddy convertible that a local dealer has given McLain for a second car.

Waiting in the Detroit clubhouse was a riot of newspaper, magazine, TV and radio reporters, poised with pencil and mike to record McLain's confrontation with immortality. After his first full night's sleep since Monday, he was in full stride—rascally one minute, sincere as a scoutmaster the next. "What did you do last night, Denny?" someone asked.

Sitting on a stool in front of his locker half undressed, McLain shuffled through some mail. He looked up at the reporters and the mikes that were shoved at his face. "Oh, I talked on the phone until about midnight. Then I went to bed and kept dreaming I'd lost my contact lenses. I spend more money on contact lenses than most guys make."

"Are you in the right mood for today?"

"I was until one of you guys started calling me ' McLain.' Look, it's Denny or Dennis or Mr. McLain. Anything but ' McLain.' "

"Is this the biggest game you've pitched all year?"

"No. That was when we came back after losing five of six games and I won over California 6-1."