Old man Jim's approach brings roar back to Tigers
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."
|
|
| Jim Leyland isn't one for idle chatter, but he does know how to fire up his team. (Getty Images) |
"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.
