Leyland's task: Restore the Tigers' roar
http://www.detnews.com/2005/tigers/0510/05/A01-338216.htm
Leyland's task: Restore the Tigers' roar
Smart, tough baseball guy with potent personality returns to
organization that gave birth to his career.
By Lynn Henning / The Detroit News
About the only surprise Tuesday when Jim Leyland was named
Tigers manager is that it didn't happen before -- in 1979.
He was then a 34-year-old crackerjack manager at Triple-A
Evansville, the Tigers' top minor-league rung. And for those
who watched Les Moss wobble his way through his first Tigers
spring training as manager in March of '79, it seemed only a
matter of time until the Tigers would be turning to the man
they were watching develop into a potent dugout presence.
Leyland three months later was beaten out as Moss' replacement
by a man named Sparky Anderson. Today, 26 years later, Leyland
is the Tigers manager, brought to Detroit by an amazing and
circuitous path some might call fate.
"It took me a long time to get here," Leyland said at a
Comerica Park news conference Tuesday. "But I finally made it."
Leyland returned Tuesday to the organization that gave birth to
his baseball career. Before he turned to managing, he had been
a longtime catcher in the Tigers' minor-league system. Good
defensive player, challenged hitter, Leyland saw by age 25 that
his future was as a coach or manager.
He signed on as a coach with Detroit's rookie-league team at
Bristol, Va., in 1970 and became its skipper a year later,
accepting a whopping $6,000 salary.
Twelve years later, he was in the big leagues as a coach on
Tony La Russa's Chicago White Sox staff. Two years later, he
was managing the Pittsburgh Pirates, with whom he would win
three division titles. In 1997, he made it all the way --
winning the World Series with Florida when his boss was current
Tigers president and general manager Dave Dombrowski.
In Leyland, the Tigers appear to have the manager Dombrowski
believed a disheveled club needed going into 2006. A team
perceived as an underachieving, ego-ridden bunch more prone to
self-destruction than to success, will find in Leyland a
seasoned whip-cracker who doesn't abide bad baseball.
Bill Lajoie, the former Tigers general manager and now
front-office assistant with the Boston Red Sox, headed
Detroit's farm system when Leyland was a minor-league manager.
"What I found in Jimmy at a young age was that he had this
quality where his players all knew their responsibility,"
Lajoie said Tuesday, speaking from Anaheim, where the Yankees
and Angels were meeting in a first-round playoff game. "And he
has a tremendous sense of timing. I saw times when he was at
Evansville, and then in the major leagues, when it was time for
a pitching change and the pitcher was already up throwing
because he knew it was time. They were all on the same page."
Asked about how Leyland would adapt to the present Tigers team,
Lajoie said:
"While I would not say there's been a discipline problem there
-- I'm not sure that's the correct word -- but for a lot of
years in that organization there's been a lot of uncertainty
about who was going to be playing. A here-today, gone-tomorrow
kind of thing, and that makes players pretty nonchalant."
Lajoie remembers spending spring trainings with Leyland in a
two-room dormitory residence at Detroit's Tigertown complex in
Lakeland, Fla., when both were in their early years as a Tigers
minor-league manager and scout.
"We'd sit there at night, talking baseball, and he would write
everything down," Lajoie remembers. "He had pads and pads of
paper, and he'd write everything down: What would you do in
this situation? What would you do in that situation?
"Then, on an off-day, he'd go over to St. Louis (St.
Petersburg, Fla.) and talk with George Kissel (longtime
Cardinals coach) and see if what we'd talked about was right or
if George would disagree.
"No player on his (Leyland's) team ever wondered about what
they were to do in a specific situation."
Lajoie said he had only one concern about Leyland's future as a
big-league manager as he climbed the farm-system ladder. Could
Leyland handle the public-relations side of the job?
"But then when he left Tigertown that spring of '79 and went up
to Evansville to make a talk -- one of those season-opening
talks to a club -- and I asked him afterward how it went.
"He said, 'Great.' I could tell right then he was in control of
things, because it wasn't a big deal for him to make that
speech. He went there that day with some apprehensiveness and
came back with the ability to handle that side of things."
What players discovered about Leyland -- at the big-league and
minor-league levels -- was that he was smart, tough, a baseball
guy all the way. He could also brandish a drill-sergeant
personality that could put the fear of the gods in a young
player.
Kirk Gibson, for example.
Shortly after signing a $200,000 bonus as Detroit's first-round
draft pick in 1978, Gibson was picked up at the airport in
Tampa, Fla., by Leyland and read the riot act as soon as they
got to Leyland's car. It was by design: Leyland, the Class A
Lakeland manager, made it clear that a hotshot two-sport
All-American from Michigan State was going to turn to ash in
the Florida heat. He would chase fly balls, adapt to running
bases rather than pass routes, learn to hit and to throw and to
become a baseball player, which Gibson most certainly was not
in those days -- not in Leyland's estimation.
Gibson wasn't alone. Fifteen years ago, Leyland unleashed a
legendary dressing-down of Barry Bonds during a spring-training
session at Bradenton, Fla., when both were with the Pirates.
It was an ear-piercing indictment that called out Bonds for a
variety of offenses, both in attitude and performance. Lajoie
happened to have been in the car with Leyland that morning as
both drove to the ballpark in Bradenton. Leyland excused
himself for a moment, ahead of their destination, saying he had
to take care of a quick problem.
It was the chewing out of Bonds. Leyland never mentioned the
moment when he returned to the car.
"I had to read about it in the paper the next day," Lajoie said.
Fernando Arroyo, a former Tigers pitcher who was just released
as Red Sox pitching coach, remembers the 1979 season when he
was pitching for Evansville and Leyland was managing.
"We won a championship in '79," Arroyo said Tuesday from his
home in Arizona. "What I remember about Jimmy is that he
treated everyone the same, that he was a hard-nosed manager who
knew the game, and who was a step ahead and very knowledgeable.
He got respect from his players. He was firm, but you respected
it."
Leyland's roots help explain his style. He was born in
Perrysburg, Ohio, not far from Toledo, one of five sons and two
daughters (Leyland's brother is a Catholic priest and his
sister a nun) raised in a working-class home. His father, also
named Jim, was a supervisor for Libby-Owens Ford Glass Co. and
had played semi-pro baseball as a catcher.
The younger Jim Leyland was quarterback on the high school
football team, a guard and captain on the basketball team, and
his prep baseball team's catcher. He signed with Baltimore out
of high school but later hooked on with the Tigers.
"He wasn't the greatest athlete in the world, he just knew how
to win -- he was a leader," said Ned Hoffman, a Toledo resident
and Leyland next-door friend who lives in Toledo, and who knew
last year Leyland was ready for a comeback.
He had seen Leyland burn out in 1999 after riding buses and
sitting in dugouts for 35 years. Leyland and his wife, Katie,
have two young children, Patrick 12, and Kelly 10, and Leyland
was ready six years ago to watch his kids grow up.
"I knew two months ago he was ready to go back, but it had to
be the right situation," Hoffman said. "Trust me, Jim's got
more energy than a 30-year-old. He's the right man for the job."
After winning a World Series, owner Wayne Huizenga blew up the
Marlins and their heavy payroll, which induced Leyland to look
for a job elsewhere after a tough 1998 season. He found it with
the Colorado Rockies. But in 1999, with a young wife and two
young boys at home, he decided 35 years on buses and airplanes
had been enough. He left the Rockies with three years and $4.5
million remaining on his contract.
That, says Hoffman, proves everything about a man and a father.
The money wasn't important. Taking a break to spend some time
with his kids and to recharge a battery was what counted.
"He's not gonna sit in there (manager's office) and worry about
things back home," said Hoffman, referring to Leyland's family,
which is expected to stay in Pittsburgh. "He'll still check on
Patrick's baseball stats (he catches for a AAU traveling team).
He'll still be doing those kinds of things. But he's not coming
to Detroit for a year and leaving."
The Tigers are relieved. They've gotten a bit weary of these
new-manager press conferences.
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