Sports – Players

Denny McLain

Bill Thompson

In all of major league baseball history, going back well over a hundred years, there has been only a handful of pitchers who have won 30 or more games in a single season.

That very short list includes names like Cy Young, Grover Cleveland Alexander, and Dizzy Dean.

And .. the last to do it — righthander Denny McLain.

It was on September 14th, 1968 that McLain, pitching for the Detroit Tigers, struck out ten to notch his 30th win of the season.

Fast forward 20 years, almost to the day — that’s when I met him.

So here now, from 1988, Denny McLain.

Denny McLain swept the 1968 American League MVP and Cy Young awards and won the Cy Young winner in 1969 as well, before his career imploded after rotator cuff issues.

But Denny McLain, who is 76 now, baseball’s last 30-game winner, never did make it to the Hall of Fame.

Sam Huff

Bill Thompson

Sam Huff was such a force in the National Football League in the 1950s and ’60s that CBS television produced a special called “The Violent World of Sam Huff.”

One of the first middle linebackers in the NFL, Huff was one of the game’s toughest competitors, first for the New York Giants, later for the Washington Redskins.

Huff played in six NFL Championship Games and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1982.

And for more than 20 years Sam Huff was a color commentator on Redskins radio broadcasts.
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I met him in 2011, when he wrote a very frank memoir.

So here now, from 2011, Sam Huff.

Sam Huff is 85 now,

Dave Pallone

Bill Thompson

A little bit of backstory: in 1979 major league baseball umpires went on strike. MLB hired substitutes — scabs, as m,any call them — and veteran minor league umpire Dave Pallone was offered a big-league job.

He remained in the National League for ten years.

But as he told in his 1990 book “Behind the Mask,” his fellow umpires disliked him. And he developed a reputation for being quick-tempered.

In April 1988, Pallone had a very high-profile confrontation with someone else who had a reputation for his temper: Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose. During an argument over a controversial call, Rose shoved Pallone — a very serious offense in baseball — and was suspended for 30 days.

Dave Pallone was forced to resign from baseball in September 1988.

I met him two years later, when he published his book.

Here now, from 1990, Dave Pallone.

“Behind the Mask” was a New York Times best-seller

Dave Pallone is 68 now, and does diversity training for corporations, as well as NCAA colleges, universities and athletes.

And he’s in the National Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame.

Wilt Chamberlain

Bill Thompson

Few people have had the kind of impact on a professional sport that Wilt Chamberlain had on the game of basketball.

In a career that started with the Harlem Globetrotters, the 7-foot-1 Chamberlain became a superstar and a record-setter.

To this day, no one has broken the record he’s best known for: scoring 100 points in a single game.

I met him in the fall of 1991, when he published an autobiography called “A View From Above.”

But in the interview you’re about to hear, there was one question I chose not to ask him, and I’ll tell you later why.

So here now, from 1991, Wilt Chamberlain:

That last remark — about “the numbers” in the book — was a reference to a statistic he included in his book that had nothing to do with basketball. Chamberlain claimed to have slept with 20,000 different women during his life.

Wilt Chamberlain was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1979.

He died in 1999 at age 63.