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All through his time at Mt. Carmel, Denny really majored in baseball—although he did try his hand briefly at basketball. "I was an average player," he says with rare modesty, "but the sport did not impress me. I didn't like to be coached. All I ever wanted to do was shoot." Heeding his father's advice to "just throw hard and fast, no curve balls," McLain became a schoolboy pitching sensation at Mt. Carmel, winning 38 games for the school team and losing only seven. On the side, he played in as many as five or six organized leagues simultaneously. "A lot of it was probably against the rules," says Father Hogan. "But baseball was Denny's whole life. When he first came to Mt. Carmel, he had to fill out a counseling form. On the line that asked what he wanted to be, he wrote: 'A major league baseball player.' " Father Hogan and Denny's other teachers tried to get McLain to go to college on an athletic scholarship. But the boy's mind was made up. No sooner had he graduated in 1962 than Denny signed with the Chicago White Sox for a $17,000 bonus. And no sooner did he get his bonus check than he blew a chunk of it on a flashy new Pontiac convertible.
Something Back Home. First stop as a pro was the White Sox Class D Appalachian League farm club in Harlan. Ky. (pop.: 4,000). Denny stayed only three weeks, but that was enough time for him to stand the town on its ear. In his very first game, he pitched a no-hitter. He also began setting records with his mouth, sounding off on his impressions of Harlan. He called the town "hick" and complained loudly about the lack of private toilet facilities in his hotel. For his own sake as well as the team's, the White Sox shipped McLain off to Clinton, Iowa.
"Ah, Clinton!" recalls Denny fondly. "That's where I got into big trouble. I quit the club. I jumped it four or five times that season. I had something going back home." Each jump cost him a $100 fine, levied by Clinton Manager Ira Hutchinson, who pressed a bridge toll collector into service to pass the word whenever McLain crossed over on his way to Chicago. The "something" Denny had going in those days may have been pretty, dark-haired Sharyn Boudreau, daughter of former Cleveland Indian Player-Manager Lou Boudreau. To hear Denny tell it, he first met Sharyn when he was 15. He struck out during a Babe Ruth League game and angrily flung his bat into the stands, hitting Sharyn on the leg. He apologized, says Denny, and romance blossomed. Sharyn says the missile was a ball, not a bat. And it hit her on the arm, not the leg. Such minor differences have bothered neither storyteller, and today Sharyn is Mrs. McLain.