Baseball's salvage expert
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Jim Leyland resurrects the Tigers
By Michelle Segrest
LindysSports.com
Thursday, October 29, 2020
Three years after setting the mark for baseball futility, the Detroit Tigers have returned to glory. Credit the farm system. Credit off-season acquisitions. And most of all, credit the crusty, chain-smoking, 61-year old manager, Jim Leyland.
This is not the first time he's salvaged a club in trouble. But it's the most impressive.
Throughout his 20-year career as a big league manager, Leyland has done more restoration than Bob Vila. But this time around, he did it with baseball's most dreadful franchise in the last decade. The before picture was that of a dusty, deteriorating, wobbly shack with cracks in the foundation . . . a team with 119 losses in 2003. The dramatic after picture shows a Detroit club as exciting as its grandiose ballpark.
Leyland had faith in this team. But he was realistic.
"I thought this would be the year where, OK, let's look at the pieces and parts," Leyland said after derailing the Yankees to earn a spot in the 2006 ALCS, in which they swept the Oakland A's. "Do we have to change some of these parts? Oil some of them? I thought next year we would be competitive. I never told the players that. But in my heart, I wanted to play .500 this year. I thought we were capable of doing that.
"But this, I couldn't have imagined."
Leyland tries to deflect the attention and the credit in other directions. His weathered, leathery face appears almost expressionless when asked to comment on his role in the Tiger transformation. But Detroit general manager Dave Dombrowski doesn't hesitate when asked who is responsible. It's all about Leyland.
"I think we have a lot of good players, but he was the difference," Dombrowski says of his skipper. "He brings leadership. He knows how to win. He doesn't miss a trick.
"He's the total package as a manager."
And he's on his way to complete retribution.
Leyland was a virtual unknown when the struggling Pirates hired him in 1986. It was a difficult situation, joining Pittsburgh on the heels of its 1985 drug scandals. But Leyland built the team into a powerhouse that won three consecutive NL East titles from 1990 to 1992. Leyland was rewarded for his efforts, earning NL Manager of the Year honors twice and during his 11-year tenure with the club became one of the most widely respected managers in baseball.
He found world championship success when he managed the Florida Marlins to the 1997 World Series title.
Gary Redus is one of many players who have spent time in baseball with Leyland. Leyland signed Redus, a hard-hitting, base-stealing, utility player, as a free agent in 1988 with the Pirates. Redus credits the current Tiger manager for a lot of his major league success.
"I played for him for five years, and every minute of it was positive," Redus says. "I think the reason he is so successful as a manager is because he treats everyone on the club fairly. It doesn't matter if you are No. 1 on the roster or No. 25, he makes you feel that you are important."
Redus remembers the clubhouse atmosphere and says Leyland's presence was always felt. "Some managers will sit back in their office and you might not ever see them off the field," Redus says. "Jim Leyland was not like that. He would walk through the clubhouse and make sure he talked to everyone. He would look you in the eye and shake your hand or touch your shoulder and speak to you personally. It didn't matter who you were, you felt a part of the big picture."
Leyland also has an innate talent for inspiring confidence in his players.
"He is such a great student of the game," Redus says. "He was always prepared. He would never pinch-hit you against a pitcher you didn't have success with. He just had this way of trying to put you in situations where you could succeed. And everyone mattered. If Barry Bonds was the third batter in the lineup and I was playing for Barry that day . . . well, he would bat me in Barry's spot instead of moving me down to No. 7 or something.
"He made you feel like if you were filling in for a superstar, then you were good enough to play his position and bat in his spot. That takes guts. And the players take notice when a manager has that kind of confidence in you."
Leyland's attention to detail and his connection with the players is not overshadowed by his intensity. He was once described by longtime coach Rich Donnelly as being able to "make coffee nervous."
Leyland is also known for ignoring the odds, on occasion. "I will not manage to the press and second-guessing," he once said. "I'm not a percentage guy. The book may say to bunt, but I never met the guy who wrote the book."
Leyland and the Tigers' impressive run this season might not have ever happened.
After a handful of title misses with Pittsburgh, Leyland won his World Series title with Florida in 1997. But a Marlins firing spree after the title season drove him to Colorado. His time with the Rockies was just that . . . rocky. He walked away in 1999 after a 72-90 season that left him as burned out as the many cigarette butts in his ashtray.
After vowing to never manage professionally again, Leyland took a six-year break. It took the combination of Detroit, the team he grew up with in the game, and Dombrowski, who was with him his title year with the Marlins, to lure Leyland back to baseball full time. Baseball and the Tigers welcomed Leyland with open arms.
Dombrowski knew the Jim Leyland story couldn't end with the Rockies. "I'm very happy for him because I know it didn't end the way he wanted it to end," Dombrowski has said. "Jim Leyland is a great man. He's a great baseball man."
Admiration for Leyland comes from all directions, even the opposing dugout. His longtime mentor and World Series adversary this season, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, is one of Leyland's biggest fans. "I'm on record saying this guy is the best I've ever been around," La Russa said. "I told him, 'I don't know anybody I've ever met in baseball in 40 years who could take a club from where they were into the playoffs and then beat the Yankees.' He's got the gift, man. You've got to have players, but they respond to him."I'm a baseball fan," La Russa added, referring to Leyland and the Tigers' season. "The story of the Tigers this year . . . it's just a great story."
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