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# On This Date: Denny McLain Wins No. 31 — and Grooves One to Mickey Mantle (Sept. 19, 1968)
- URL: https://www.grumpybuck.com/on-this-date-denny-mclain-wins-no-31-and-grooves-one-to-mickey-mantle-sept-19-1968/
- Published: 2026-09-19T11:51:52.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-19T11:51:52.000Z
- Description: Sept. 19, 1968: McLain beat the Yankees for his 31st win, the last 30-win season in baseball, in front of 9,063 people — and deliberately grooved a pitch to Mickey Mantle for career home run No. 535.
- Author: Brad Riddell
- Tags: Sports History, On This Date, Baseball, MLB

![Denny McLain at Tiger Stadium. In 1968 he went 31-6 with a 1.96 ERA and won the Cy Young and the MVP unanimously, at 24.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/Denny-McLain-I.jpeg)

Denny McLain at Tiger Stadium. In 1968 he went 31-6 with a 1.96 ERA and won the Cy Young and the MVP unanimously, at 24.

On this date in 1968, Denny McLain beat the Yankees 6-2 at Tiger Stadium for his **31st** win of the season. It remains the last time any pitcher has won 30 games, and 58 years later nobody has won more than 27.

There were **9,063** people there. The Tigers had clinched the pennant two nights earlier and the game meant nothing, and the most memorable thing that happened in it was a home run McLain gave up on purpose.

![Detroit Free Press, Friday, Sept. 20, 1968. George Cantor's game story, Joe Falls' column on the Mantle home run, and a photo of McLain phoning his wife Sharyn to tell her he'd won No. 31.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/Detroit_Free_Press_1968_09_20_Page_37.jpg)

Detroit Free Press, Friday, Sept. 20, 1968\. George Cantor's game story, Joe Falls' column on the Mantle home run, and a photo of McLain phoning his wife Sharyn to tell her he'd won No. 31.

## Tying a Record From 1931

The 31st win tied Lefty Grove's 1931 total — the last 31-win season before McLain's, 37 years earlier. George Cantor noted the coincidence in the Free Press the next morning: "It was just a bad day all around for the 1931 Philadelphia Athletics. Mantle's homer broke his tie with Jimmy Foxx, a teammate of Grove's that season."

So in one afternoon, McLain matched Grove and Mantle passed Foxx — two 1931 Athletics, knocked off the board in the same nine innings.

McLain hadn't planned to finish it. Pat Dobson was fully warm in the bullpen; he decided on the spur of the moment to go all nine. Norm Cash hit two home runs, both of them to left field, which for a dead-pull first baseman was news in itself. Mel Stottlemyre, a 20-game winner, took the loss. Cantor's summary of that: "Twenty games — poof."

It was a loose afternoon. Manager Mayo Smith had gone home with a cold, so Willie Horton carried the lineup card to the plate and ran the club from Smith's perch in the dugout. Mickey Stanley played seven innings at shortstop. In the ninth McLain broke up an argument between his catcher and umpire Russ Goetz — "I had an appointment and I didn't want to be late," he explained.

## "High and Tight, Mediocre Cheese"

In the eighth, with one out, Mickey Mantle came up. He was 36, hitting .237, playing on ruined legs, and sitting on **534** career home runs — tied with Jimmie Foxx for third on the all-time list. He hadn't announced anything yet, but he was finished. This was his last game in Detroit.

Catcher Jim Price went out to the mound. McLain's question, as Price told it for the next forty years: "Hey, big guy, should I let him hit one?"

Price got back behind the plate and asked Mantle straight out whether he wanted one grooved. Mantle told him: **"High and tight, mediocre cheese."**

McLain threw it there. Mantle hit it into the upper deck in right field for No. 535, passing Foxx, third all-time behind only Babe Ruth and Willie Mays.

Joe Falls, the Free Press sports editor, wrote it up the next morning under the headline "Who'll Ever Forget The Mick's 535th?" — and what he described is the part that doesn't get retold:

> This may have been the only time in baseball history that a rival team stood up and applauded one of the enemy after he crashed one into the seats. That's exactly what the players in the Detroit dugout did as Mantle rounded the bases. Everybody was applauding. The Yankees, the Tigers, and the fans. Even McLain threw a salute over to Mantle when he got back to the dugout.

Mantle, in the Yankee clubhouse afterward: **"Tell Denny thanks. He's made a fan of me for life."**

McLain, asked directly whether he'd grooved it, went with the straight face: "You don't think I'd deliberately throw him a home-run ball, do you?"

Falls wasn't fooled, and didn't pretend to be. "McLain, you see, let him hit it. He threw it right down the pipe, smack across the plate, squarely in Mantle's power and The Mick rode it out." He called it the most touching moment of a week that had also included McLain's 30th win and a pennant clinching.

## One More, and Then He Was Done

Mantle hit exactly one more home run in his life.

The next night, back at Yankee Stadium, first inning, off Boston's Jim Lonborg: No. **536**. The Yankees lost 4-3\. He retired that winter and the number stood.

So the last two home runs Mickey Mantle ever hit came twenty-four hours apart, and one of them was a gift from a pitcher who'd grown up idolizing him.

![McLain's 1968 Topps card — the card from the season itself.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/Denny-McLain-II.jpg)

McLain's 1968 Topps card — the card from the season itself.

## Then the Best World Series Anybody Could Remember

Detroit went to St. Louis as the favorite and ran into Bob Gibson, who was finishing a season with a **1.12** ERA.

In Game 1 on Oct. 2, Gibson struck out **17** Tigers. It is still the World Series record. McLain took the loss.

![St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 3, 1968 — Bob Broeg's column, a photograph of Gibson soaked through after the game, and Gibson's own first-person account of the 17 strikeouts.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/St_Louis_Post_Dispatch_1968_10_03_Page_28.jpg)

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 3, 1968 — Bob Broeg's column, a photograph of Gibson soaked through after the game, and Gibson's own first-person account of the 17 strikeouts.

Gibson wrote his own column for the Post-Dispatch, and it is a wonderful piece of deflation. He hadn't known he was near the record: "I couldn't imagine what all the shouting was about until Tim McCarver motioned to me and I turned around and saw something on the scoreboard about 16 strikeouts and a World Series record." He added: "You don't know how many strikeouts you have in a game. At that point, I thought I had about nine or 10\. When I got Willie Horton for No. 17, I was happy because the game was over."

He threw 144 pitches. He'd skipped breakfast, driven himself to the ballpark alone, had a cup of coffee and a couple of doughnuts, and ate candy bars during the game. "I don't recommend that as the proper diet before going out to pitch, but if it works I'm not going to complain."

And then, about the man who'd just won 31 games:

> McLain is a good pitcher. Whether he'd win 31 games in our league, I really couldn't say.

Gibson beat McLain again in Game 4\. Detroit was down three games to one and finished.

They were not finished. In Game 5 at Tiger Stadium, with St. Louis up 3-2 and Lou Brock on second, Julian Javier singled to left. Brock decided not to slide. Willie Horton's throw was perfect, Bill Freehan blocked the plate, and Brock was out standing up. Tigers 5-3.

McLain finally got his win in Game 6, 13-1, behind a Jim Northrup grand slam in a ten-run third.

Game 7, Oct. 10, Busch Stadium: Mickey Lolich against Gibson, scoreless into the seventh. Two on, two out, and Northrup hit one to center. Curt Flood broke in, realized it was over his head, turned, and slipped. Triple, two runs, and Detroit won 4-1.

Lolich — the man who pitched all year behind McLain — threw **three complete-game wins** in that Series and beat Gibson in Game 7\. He was the MVP. Nobody has won three complete games in a World Series since. McLain finished 1-2.

![Dick McAuliffe, Jim Northrup and Mickey Stanley with the trophy in the visitors' clubhouse at Busch Stadium.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/Tigers-1968-I.jpg)

Dick McAuliffe, Jim Northrup and Mickey Stanley with the trophy in the visitors' clubhouse at Busch Stadium.

## "We Win"

The Free Press gave the next morning over to it. The front page was two enormous words.

![Detroit Free Press, Oct. 11, 1968. Barbara Stanton's story ran under the headline "City Goes Wild After Tiger Victory."](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/Detroit_Free_Press_1968_10_11_Page_1.jpg)

Detroit Free Press, Oct. 11, 1968\. Barbara Stanton's story ran under the headline "City Goes Wild After Tiger Victory."

Barbara Stanton's lede: "At 4:06 p.m., Bill Freehan caught a pop fly in St. Louis and Detroit exploded like a magnificent firecracker." Twenty thousand people jammed Metro Airport hoping the team would land there, and closed it. Confetti and shredded telephone books came down off the skyscrapers. "Grown men giggled, women cried and old, sour faces split suddenly with grins." A restaurant on Lafayette put up a sign: *Today's Special: Southern Fried Cardinal.*

It was Detroit's first baseball championship since 1945, and it came fourteen months after the 1967 disorder that killed 43 people and left parts of the city burned. The paper reached for that directly — the Tigers, it wrote, "proved that Detroit could rise again" — and quoted a man outside that restaurant saying, "This city deserved it. It really deserved it."

![Downtown Detroit, October 1968.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/Detroit-Celebration-1968-II.jpg)

Downtown Detroit, October 1968.

Inside, the index pointed to two more stories worth the dime: "I'll never forget it" — Al Kaline. And, from the other clubhouse: "It's my fault . . . I misjudged Northrup's hit" — Curt Flood.

## What Happened to Denny McLain

He won the Cy Young and the MVP unanimously that fall, at 24\. He won 24 more games in 1969 and shared another Cy Young.

Then it came apart faster than it had come together. In 1970 he was suspended for involvement in a bookmaking operation, suspended again for dousing two sportswriters with water, and again for carrying a gun on a team flight. He was traded to Washington, went 10-22 in 1971, and was out of the major leagues after the 1972 season, at **28**. He later served federal prison time, twice.

McLain won **114** games before he turned 26, and **17** for the rest of his life.

![McLain at Tiger Stadium, 1968.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/09/Denny-McLain-VI.jpg)

McLain at Tiger Stadium, 1968.

Fifty-eight years on, 31 is still the number. Nobody has won 30\. Nobody has won 28\. Bob Welch's 27 in 1990 is the closest anybody has come, and no one has won even 25 since. The only man who ever got near it spent one of those wins giving a home run to a hitter he'd idolized as a kid — and it didn't cost him anything at all.

**Who's the last pitcher you think could have won 30? Comments below.**