WIXOM, Mich. (AP) - Former Detroit Tigers pitching ace and two-time Cy Young award winner Denny McLain wants to part with baseball bats, pennants, trading cards and a few thousand other pieces of sports memorabilia.
They will be sold during an estate sale at McLain’s Wixom home, northwest of Detroit. The sale started Thursday and runs through the weekend.
“There’s real history here,” McLain told WJBK-TV. “My father-in-law was Lou Boudreau, hall-of-famer with the Cleveland Indians. So we’ve got a lot of his stuff.”
McLain said his wife died recently and its time to downsize their home.
Aaron Siepierski is setting up the sale and says that due to the COVID-19 virus “a lot of people’s lives are changing … they want to be more nimble and tied down with less things.”
“He wants to be free of stuff, so he can move through life a lot easier,” Siepierski told the Detroit Free Press.
The sports memorabilia to be sold is from the 1930s through the 1970s. It also includes baseballs, batting helmets and scorecards.
McLain, a hard-throwing righthander, won 31 games in 1968 and led the Detroit Tigers to the World Series championship. He won 131 games and lost 91 during 10 seasons in the major leagues, according to Baseball-Reference.com. He spent eight seasons in Detroit.
McLain was convicted of federal drug and racketeering charges in 1985 and served 29 months in prison before an appeals court overturned the convictions. He pleaded guilty to reduced charges in 1988 and was placed on probation.
In 1987, a federal judge sentenced him to eight years for stealing from the pension plan of a company that went bankrupt 18 months after he bought it.
McLain, 76, is expected to be on hand each day of the sale which is open to the public Friday through Sunday. People who bought $200-$400 advance tickets are able to attend Thursday’s opening day.
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