Old man Jim's approach brings roar back to Tigers
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By Scott Miller
CBS SportsLine.com Senior Writer
Aug. 23, 2006
DETROIT -- Jim Leyland, Take One:
It is a spring morning, the old manager is still in the getting-acquainted stages with his new club and the baseball world is in shock from the news that Kirby Puckett has died.
The team is out on the grass, stretching as a group before another day's workout, when the old manager walks up to them and cracks open his heart.
"He said he did not have a chance to work with Kirby Puckett much, but it got around through word of mouth what a great teammate Kirby Puckett was, and that that's what everybody knew about Puckett, and given that, what could be a higher honor in the game of baseball?" Detroit Tigers third baseman Brandon Inge says. "Not your personal stats, not anything else. Everybody in the game knew what a great teammate he was."
Think about that for a little bit right now, Leyland told a team still sizing up the old manager. Think about that for the rest of the day. And then Leyland started to tear up, and then he broke down.
"It gave me chills," Inge says. "From that moment on, if we needed an out, I was going to dive into the stands to get it for that man. Any time."
It is five months later, Detroit is charging toward one of the greatest turnarounds in baseball history and the Tigers have just taken the first two of a colossal four-game series with the defending World Series champion Chicago White Sox.
Any more questions about Leyland taking six years off between managerial gigs?
There are a million reasons why the Tigers have accelerated their rebuilding process at a stunningly rapid pace, and yes, Leyland, 61, is only one.
From the addition of free agents Kenny Rogers and Todd Jones to the emergence of rookies Justin Verlander and Joel Zumaya to big bangers Magglio Ordonez and Carlos Guillen finally being healthy over the course of an entire season, a near-perfect convergence of elements have conspired to bring baseball fever back to Detroit.
But Leyland, whose AL Manager of the Year award this fall should be delivered in a nearly unanimous vote, has been brilliant with his touch. And what is fascinating is that this famously gruff man delivers these touches with such subtleness that so many of them are so quiet and so sensitively executed.
Oh, he can bring the hammer down hard, as he did in probably his most well-publicized moment of the season, when he launched into a tirade following a lackadaisical homestand finale loss to Cleveland on April 17.
He accused his team of waltzing through the game, thinking more about that night's flight to Oakland than about the Indians, and he was right. He made his point, demanding that it had better not become a habit, and it was one of the few times you'll see a championship team's season turn on such a crystal clear moment.
Most of the time, though, Leyland's genius is in the small moments.
Jim Leyland, Take Two:
It is a rain delay earlier this season, and the old manager ventures out into the clubhouse, as he often does, to check the pulse of his club. He quietly moves from locker to locker, reinforcing a point he thinks is important to drive home.
"Stay focused," he urges each player. "It's easy to let down during rain delays. It's easy to get into the frame of mind that you're not going to play, that the game will be canceled. Keep your edge. We can win three or four games a year coming out of rain delays if you keep your edge."
Watching him work is like taking a graduate course in human relations. He quietly makes his rounds each day -- in the clubhouse before batting practice, on the field during and in the clubhouse after.
He found a quiet moment in the dugout just before the series opener Monday to remind his hitters of one of Ted Williams' dictums, make sure you get a good pitch to hit. They did, most of the time, and handed a 7-1 thrashing to Jose Contreras and the White Sox.
"He talks to them in private on the field, not in his office, because he feels that's an embarrassment to call someone into his office to talk," says Tigers Hall of Famer Al Kaline, now a special assistant to general manager Dave Dombrowski.
In many ways, Leyland is the same guy now that he was managing Pittsburgh (1986-1996), Florida (1997-1998) and Colorado (1999). He still burns to win. He still appears, in the dugout, more emaciated than one of those Grateful Dead skeletons. He still retains that sardonic sense of humor.
"I've always been this type of guy," Leyland says. "I don't say a whole lot. If I have something to say, I say it. I don't like idle chatter. If you have a message and you don't say it and you lose the ballgame, you go home and you say, 'Goddamn, I wish I would have said this.' Or, 'I would have said that.'
"I go around and talk to them every day. We've been preaching a lot of that stuff all year, get a better pitch to hit."
Andy Van Slyke, the Detroit first-base coach who played for Leyland in Pittsburgh from 1987-1992, says he sees a different Leyland, if only in spots, since the old manager stepped out of the dugout for six years.
"Everybody's changed from their 40s to their 60s, and Jim is no different," Van Slyke says. "I think he can see the bigger picture now. I don't think losing hurts him any less than it did, but maybe it doesn't tear his guts out as much.
"He's got kids. Being away from the game, I think, was a healthy thing. When you get outside the bubble as a player or coach or manager, to be honest, I think that's a good thing. It helps you see another world outside of baseball."
Leyland, in fact, before Rogers went out and pitched brilliantly to lead the Tigers to a 4-0 victory Tuesday night to stretch their division lead over Chicago to a sturdy 7 1/2 games, spent part of his afternoon pitching batting practice to his son Patrick, 14 (daughter Kellie is 12).
"I'll say this," Van Slyke says. "To me, I see him having more fun during the course of the game than when I played for him. I think he allows himself to enjoy the moments that require a little laughter or a smile. Before, I think he thought he had to protect himself from letting it show."
Jim Leyland, Takes Three, Four and Five:
It is opening day, the Tigers are attempting to protect a one-run lead in the seventh inning in Kansas City, and the old manager summons reliever Zumaya, a 21-year-old rookie who some managers perhaps might not baptize in such an intense moment. The kid, whose fastball is regularly clocked between 100 and 102 mph, rises to the occasion with two shutout innings and has been lights out ever since.
It is three weeks into the season, the Tigers are in Seattle and infielder Omar Infante hasn't played in a week. The old manager makes it a point to sidle up to Infante one afternoon and softly tell him, "Hey, don't worry, I haven't forgotten you." Next day, Infante is in the lineup, batting third.
It is May, the Tigers are in Baltimore, and a team showing lots of promise suddenly has lost three consecutive games. The old manager, instead of shuffling lineups and clamming up, goes on rounds again telling the players, "Come on now, this isn't that bad." The team reels off seven consecutive wins.
He doesn't miss a trick. These small moments occur regularly, and they act as building blocks for the big moments. As the Tigers were getting swept in a key series in Chicago just 10 days ago, instead of spending his time scoreboard watching and sweating as the White Sox sliced their lead from 10 games to 5 1/2, Leyland was telling his players how wonderful it is to be in the race, how much fun these big games are, and how much they should be enjoying themselves -- win or lose -- after the difficult times of recent seasons.
"When we were swept, he was going around whistling in the clubhouse," Kaline says. "You would think that he would be down, and he would be the one reminding them, 'Hey guys, we just got swept.' But he wasn't. Players watch to see how a manager reacts. If he was down there throwing things, they were going to start panicking."
The old manager also has displayed his managing skills in successfully and graciously massaging through another very touchy area, that of the memory of Tigers legend Alan Trammell, who was fired as manager after last season.
Multiple times this season, he has pointed out that Trammell last year did not have many of the players who are contributing to this year's team. Rogers, Jones, Zumaya, Verlander ... all new this year. Guillen and Ordonez were playing hurt for much of last season. Curtis Granderson has blossomed. Pudge Rodriguez quit on Trammell and his staff by August.
"He's told the players, and you can quote me on this, 'I'm no better than Alan Trammell. I'm no smarter than he is,'" Kaline says. "Just play hard every day."
And so they have. Following Tuesday's victory over Chicago, Leyland said that all he wants from his team on Wednesday is "for them to come out here like it was the first game of the series."
Given the way the first 126 games have gone, there is no reason to believe they won't.
"The first thing I say about him is, you know who the manager is," says designated hitter Dmitri Young. "No. 2, he brings confidence, but at the same time, there's no comfort level. He won't let us get comfortable.
"He's constantly reminding us that we haven't done anything yet, no matter how well we've played. We haven't won the division. We're not in the playoffs."
Jim Leyland, Take Six:
It is Tuesday afternoon, not long before the Tigers and White Sox will play the second game of their series this week, and Leyland has zeroed in on designated hitter Marcus Thames' career numbers against Chicago starter Mark Buehrle. They're miserable. Thames is 2-for-14 (.143) with five strikeouts lifetime against Buehrle.
So, of course, Leyland made sure to visit with Thames.
"I told him, 'If you don't have a good approach in your first at-bat tonight, I'm taking you out," the old manager says. "Of course, I was kidding. And then he got some good pitches to hit."
Indeed, Thames worked a full-count, bases-loaded walk in the first inning to make it 1-0. Then he boomed an RBI triple in the third to push Detroit to a 2-0 lead, and he homered in the fifth to make it 3-0.
And afterward, he cracked up when someone asked about Leyland's teasing him before the game.
"I was trying to be as patient as I could," Thames says. "I got that bases-loaded walk and I took a deep breath from there. I thought, 'OK, I can play a little bit more now.'"
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