In 1968 24-year-old Denny McLain turned the baseball world upside
down by winning 31 games for the Detroit Tigers. McLain was also a
musician. After he won both the MVP and Cy Young Awards in '68,
he cut two albums for Capitol Records and played the Hammond organ
in a three-week stint in Las Vegas. But winning games and
performing on stage were never enough for McLain. He was driven by
an insatiable thirst for attention and adventure. In 1969, flying
back from a dental appointment in Detroit that he could have
rescheduled, Denny arrived 20 minutes after he was supposed to have
thrown the first pitch of the 1969 All-Star Game in Washington,
D.C. By 1972 the pain and inflammation of a torn rotator cuff in
his pitching shoulder became overwhelming, and at age 28 Denny
McLain was washed up as a major league pitcher. It was then that
McLain's bravado and notion of invincibility led him squarely
into the jaws of disaster. In I Told You I Wasn't Perfect,
McLain colorfully recounts his fabulous success in one of
baseball's most exciting eras, as well as his rapid fall from
glory, two prison stints, and a horrific personal tragedy. It would
be a challenge to invent a character that soars to such dizzying
heights and then plunges to such depths of despair as McLain did.
And it is McLain's ability to finally reflect on his mistakes
and self-indulgences that makes his story one of the most
compelling baseball memoirs to come along in a generation.
