A Letter From The Publisher: Sep. 13, 1968

I’VE always had a healthy wariness of athletes,” says TIME’S Detroit Correspondent Joseph Kane. “Perhaps it’s their size, but I’m always afraid that a question about their shortcomings will bring a punch in the nose.”

Since he was responsible for the bulk of the reporting on Detroit Pitcher Denny McLain, this week’s cover subject, Kane had ample opportunity to test his theory. It proved to be unfounded. Kane’s big problem was not belligerence; it was entirely a matter of timing. McLain kept moving so fast that Kane hardly had a chance to ask all the necessary questions. Kane found himself taking notes while chatting at the water fountain in the Tiger dugout, while chasing his man through hotel lobbies, in between sessions at a television studio and on the warm-up mound in the stadium bullpen. His biggest break came when the brakes locked on a plane that was bringing the Tiger star from Boston to New York. McLain fumed at the delay, but there he was—trapped in the cabin with Kane for one long hour, with nothing to do except talk about himself.

Kane found the three weeks he spent traveling with the Tigers a kind of on-the-job vacation. As a ball fan who grew up in Washington, D.C., and learned the game by watching the ever-losing Senators, he found it pleasant to be with a winner for a change. “While my associates were involved with more serious problems—convention coverage and urban warfare—I was utterly consumed with baseball. I sat through some fifteen ball games, including a doubleheader that had a 19-inning second game. I was never bored for a minute.”

The winning ways of McLain and his teammates were no less pleasant for Cover Writer Charles Parmiter and Senior Editor George Daniels. Sport figures have a way of stumbling embarrassingly just as a big story is going to press. Denny McLain and the Tigers never gave the TIME Sport staff a moment’s worry.

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