Tigers bring in old guard to restore pride to team

Camping Out with Miller

LAKELAND, Fla. -- Pride is always the last thing to go for a diseased franchise.

The errors come first. Or maybe the poor pitching. Or, perhaps, the strikeouts and wasted at-bats. The order isn't really important. Eventually, one leads to another, which leads to the other, and things quickly move from the contagious stage to raging epidemic.

Alan Trammell (center) has sought the counsel of Roger Craig (left) and buddy Kirk Gibson. (AP)

Then the losses begin to pile up like garbage out back, the moods begin to turn sour and sullen and in the really bad cases, the terminal cases, the atmosphere soon becomes emergency room-like, with the heartbeat threatening to flat-line and the death certificate waiting in the top drawer.

"It's been a very disappointing last six or seven years, seeing guys in here who don't understand the history of the Detroit Tigers," Hall of Famer Al Kaline said the other day here at the satellite site of one of Michigan's biggest reclamation projects: The salvation of the once-proud Tigers. "What a great town this is to play in.

"All they ask is that you give a good, honest day's work, and they'll respond. We haven't had that. Now, we've got guys back who truly love the Tigers, who love Tiger baseball.

"There is not a single person better for our organization right now than Alan Trammell."

What this season is about in Detroit isn't who's on first, or what's on third. I Don't Know might as well be playing all nine positions. The cupboard is bare and the immediate future is bleak. This is an organization with more than 100 years on its treads, yet it is one that too often lately has behaved -- and, ultimately, played -- like an expansion club.

So by necessity, not by choice, what this season is about in Detroit is direction, professionalism and, yes, pride. There hasn't been much of it around the Tigers lately. The new leadership team of manager Trammell and key members of his staff such as bench coach Kirk Gibson and bullpen coach Lance Parrish -- all three core members of the Tigers' last world championship club in 1984 -- are baseball's version of the Red Cross.

The Tigers named Trammell as the 35th manager in club history last October -- and the fifth skipper since Hall of Famer Sparky Anderson retired after the 1995 season. The recent past has been marked by misjudged talent, seeming lost interest by owner Mike Ilitch, the poor decisions and the wasted time of the Juan Gonzalez experiment, screaming matches between former manager Phil Garner and players (including in the dugout during games), an ugly lawsuit filed by a former flight attendant on the team charter flights accusing players of sexual harassment and smoking marijuana, and assorted other embarrassing episodes.

"We need more players, that's a given," Kaline said. "But we have to start someplace. We're really starting right from scratch. Come to play every day. It's a bad thing to say, but if you lose, you want to lose good -- the players playing until the last out."

Expectations don't get much lower than that.

Then again, when it comes time to level a burned-out neighborhood and rebuild, you do what you've gotta do.

"Alan played here 20 years," Gibson said. "I grew up here. We have an understanding and knowledge of what the people of Michigan want and expect.

"Connection with the city is big. Quite frankly, I think one thing over the past few years, and it's no slight against anybody, but people here didn't have any idea of how to do that. I think I have a good idea of what the people in Detroit like and understand. We want our team to connect to the city and to the fans -- beyond the success we're going to have on the field."

Camp Trammell has been very upbeat and energetic so far, though it's also not unlike the bleak setting in Bruce Springsteen's The Ghost of Tom Joad: The highway is alive tonight, but nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes. When Steve Avery is getting work in Grapefruit League games and enters camp with even an outside chance to win a rotation spot, we ain't exactly talking yellow brick road.

But Trammell, and his staff, knew that going in -- and it's part of why they took the job.

"As far as being an ex-player, as a guy who took a lot of pride in wearing this uniform and as a guy who knows how much this team means to the state of Michigan, it's been very, very difficult to see the nosedive and all of the negative things that have gone on," Parrish said. "You sit back and watch, and it's very tough.

"This is a great opportunity for all of us to bring the organization back, to bring the respectability back, to put it back on course."

The Tigers have tried several approaches since the mid-1990s to right the course, but each time it's been about as effective as a cat chasing its own tail. They have compiled nine consecutive losing seasons, and they've lost 90 or more games in five of the past seven seasons and attendance at Comerica Park in 2002 was down a remarkable and stunning 41 percent from the stadium's inaugural season in 2000.

But hey, you get what you pay for, and what Ilitch was paying for last summer was this: In 13 weekend series during the 2002 season, the Tigers were swept in seven of them.

Uh, movies anyone?

Though Trammell has never managed at any level, his hiring was a smart move by president and GM Dave Dombrowski simply because Trammell -- and, by extension, Gibson and Parrish -- is one of the few people who can restore at least some measure of credibility to an organization starving for it. They are intelligent, they are hard workers, they were schooled by Sparky Anderson and they already have relationships with the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan.

"No question," Kaline said. "When we hired Tram, it was like we had won the World Series. The headlines were everywhere. In the newspapers. On TV. It just shows the respect he commands."

Anderson has had very little to do with the organization since his retirement after the 1995 season largely because things got ugly between he and Ilitch at the end. Yet, at Trammell's request, he will join the Tigers here for a couple of weeks in mid-March to watch, evaluate, scout and offer inspirational help to Trammell.

"(Trammell) has said he wants Mickey Lolich, Gates Brown, any of the old players, he wants 'em around the clubhouse," Kaline said. "He wants players that have played on winning teams to sit down and talk with these players about what it's like to play in Detroit and what it means to play in Detroit."

With Trammell, Gibson and Parrish aboard -- and staff members Juan Samuel (third base), Mick Kelleher (first base) and Bruce Fields (hitting coach), all of whom played for the Tigers at one time or another -- it isn't unlike an alumni club being called to arms in a crisis situation. Of the field staff, only pitching coach Bob Cluck has no prior ties to the Tigers; he and Trammell co-founded the San Diego School of Baseball together. But it isn't as if Cluck isn't qualified -- he has coached in professional baseball for 36 seasons.

For Trammell, though, the job is monumental, and a comfortable working environment. He and Parrish have been so close over the years that, in 1982, Trammell named his first-born son Lance. He and Gibson have forged a solid friendship over the years.

"I understand totally his philosophy because we've been talking about it for years," Gibson said. "The good thing about Alan, he's talked to Sparky, Roger Craig (the former San Francisco manager and Detroit pitching coach), Tony La Russa ... the list goes on and on.

"He's a thinker. He gathers information."

A lifetime Tiger during 20 seasons as a player -- Trammell was only the third man ever to play at least 20 seasons for the franchise, following Kaline and Ty Cobb -- Trammell was removed from the coaching staff by Garner after the 1999 season and allowed to escape in what was one of the organization's most shameful moments. Wanting to stay in uniform rather than return to a front-office job, Trammell accepted the first-base coaching job under Bruce Bochy in San Diego.

"Tram should have never been allowed to leave here," said Kaline, who is entering his 51st year in the organization. "For whatever reason, and I don't know the reason, he was.

"I do know that the front office here has always given the manager his choice as far as a coaching staff.

"To see Tram leave just broke my heart, because I don't know anybody other than myself who loves the Tigers more than I do."

That, more than simply being afforded a chance to manage a big-league team (well, in title, at least), is why Trammell accepted Detroit's offer last fall. And this winter, as Gibson noted, Trammell spoke to several people about managing, including La Russa at the winter meetings in Nashville, Tenn.

"He just told me to manage like I played," Trammell said.

A few days later, at the Cardinals' camp in Jupiter, Fla., La Russa smiled and nodded.

"That's exactly what I told him," La Russa said. "If Detroit plays like he manages, and he manages like he played, they'll improve.

"He's tied for first as my favorite player, with guys like (Paul) Molitor and (George) Brett. I used to tell Sparky all the time every time we played Detroit, I'd come to the park early to watch him take ground balls. He was a beautiful player. I hope he gets into the Hall of Fame."

Trammell didn't have much to say when we were with him last weekend, but it wasn't because seeing the lack of talent up close rendered him speechless. Rather, he was fighting a virus that had darn near left him with a case of laryngitis. He could barely talk. Nevertheless, his usual enthusiasm, exuberance and infectious smile were all present.

Asked if this was going to be a more difficult challenge than he anticipated, Trammell brushed it off.

"I think it's easier, because I'm more comfortable," he rasped. "A few years ago, I think it would have been harder. But now, I haven't been playing for so long -- that was a full six or seven years ago.

"I know what the fans want. Every little step is important. We know how to do it, as far as getting the direction changed."

Trammell's hiring alone has the telephones buzzing again in the Detroit ticket office -- at least, they're ringing a bit more than they were last summer. The Tigers aren't expecting a huge bump in attendance, but the trajectory that has seen Comerica Park's attendance plummet should at least be blunted in the short term.

Beyond that, if Trammell and his staff can even stop the Tigers from getting their tails kicked with regularity on home weekends this summer, hey, it will be a start.

"Our challenge is, think of building a puzzle," Gibson said, "If you build a puzzle, you take the top off and pour it out. Then you look at the picture to see how it's supposed to go.

"Our job is to make sure the team looks at the picture and sees how things are supposed to go. If it doesn't, we have no chance. Because it's been proven, you don't move forward to what you don't see. You have to see something to move forward toward it.

"Everybody in this game has a picture. Some define it better than others. We hope we're able to define it like that.

"It's a huge challenge. But that's why we do it -- it's what we love."

Past Florida stops: Astros in Kissimmee | Braves in Lake Buena Vista | Marlins in Jupiter | Red Sox in Fort Myers | Twins in Fort Myers | Cardinals in Jupiter | Mets in Port St. Lucie | Dodgers in Vero | Yankees in Tampa | Devil Rays in St. Petersburg | Phillies in Clearwater