Michael Whitaker
Normally, team coaches and managers let their teams have it following a poor performance.
But for Detroit Tigers skipper Ron Gardenhire, his anger couldn’t be delayed until after the afternoon’s final pitch. His team was completely listless Thursday afternoon at Comerica Park against the Oakland A’s, losing by a eyebrow-raising 17-3 final score.
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By the time the third inning rolled around, Gardenhire had seen enough, and his fury couldn’t be delayed any longer.
“We had that in the dugout in the third inning,” Gardenhire said. “I said about all I needed to say in the third inning. I was flinging it out there pretty good. I don’t know what language it was in, but it was definitely not the normal language.
“I was pretty hot.”
The mistakes and mental lapses his team displayed especially got under his skin. It didn’t help when Nick Castellanos tried to steal second base, despite not being signaled to. The play at second wasn’t even close.
“That made Miggy lead off the next inning and Miggy’s not Rickey Henderson,” Gardenhire said. “We don’t want Miggy leading off, we want him to hit with runners on. We told Nicky about it. It was a bad play.”
“Cut-offs, relays, not moving, standing — it was meant for a lot of people,” Gardenhire said of his dugout diatribe. “We had a runner thrown out with Miggy at the plate. A lot of little things, and a lot of them in that one inning.”
But following an error by first baseman Niko Goodrum, the A’s had put up six runs, five of them unearned. And that’s when Gardenhire let loose.
“There were a lot of things that happened in that one inning that cost us six runs,” Gardenhire said. “And cost that kid (pitcher Spencer Turnbull) about 25 extra pitches. I was frustrated, so I vented.”
