Former Detroit Tigers skipper Jim Leyland has a special place in the hearts of the fans of the Motor City. The third winningest manager in Tigers history, Leyland led Detroit to four straight Central Division titles, two World Series appearances, and 700 victories.
“I was absolutely thrilled, because the last thing on my mind when I stepped down from Colorado in 1999 was that I would ever manage again, let alone with the team that I signed with in 1963 and then finally make it to the big leagues with them in 2006,” he explained about being hired by Detroit. “I wrote a letter to the team over the winter and told them about my expectations. I knew they had a lot of talent but they weren’t a team yet. I wanted them to take the field with a little swagger and play a full nine innings. Fortunately, everyone got on board, we got off to a good start and started believing. It was a thrill. We loved that team and became very close.”
He’s still with the organization, serving as special advisor to Tigers general manager Al Avila in addition to doing work for Commissioner Rob Manfred.
Of course, the two World Series losses in 2006 and 2012 still sting, but he’s proud of the work that the two editions of the team put in to reach that mark.
“In both cases, we sat around before the Series and lost our edge but I’ll never make excuses or say that is what cost us because we got beat by teams that deserved it. I’m sad and am sorry to the fans that we didn’t get that final piece of the puzzle. I know that some people will judge me on that forever and I understand it. But I also have had some prominent baseball writers tell me that it was one of the best eras and maybe the best era of Tiger baseball. Detroit is a great sports town and we drew over 3 million fans a season four times and that’s hard to believe. It was so exciting. Everywhere you went, people were wearing Tiger stuff. We wanted to make going to a Tiger game the thing to do and those teams did that. I enjoyed my time there and we did a good job.”
And being the thinking man that he is, he has ideas of how to speed up the game.
“I understand the concern for pace of play but I think you can go overboard with rule changes. I know this for a fact that when I was in the dugout, and maybe the players won’t admit this, but they have said, ‘when is this game going to get over?’ I believe the way to speed up the game is to getting the hitter in the batter’s box. Guys are (expletive) around waiting for their walk-up music. If a guy hits a pop up to shortstop, what’s going to really happen? The next hitter should be walking to home plate. It’s not the pitchers, it’s the hitters who slow the (expletive) game down. Just get in the batter’s box. That will speed up the game more than anything. You don’t need all these rule changes. If they have to have walk up music, play it the first time up but not for the rest of the game. We also have all this new technology and analytics and a lot of it is really good but we’ve created a game with a home run, a walk and a strikeout. We got all this stuff but young fans aren’t coming as much and are saying we have a boring game. We need to look into it a little bit.”
What does Leyland believe that the future holds for the Tigers?
“I don’t believe there’s a team in baseball that has a better combination of pitching prospects but I know Kansas City has some great arms, too. You can’t ever say they’re the real deal until they come up to the big leagues and do it because there’s no such thing as a sure thing. Who knows which pitchers are going to come up and really take off like Justin Verlander did? Will we see three or four Verlanders coming up at the same time? That probably won’t happen but we have guys coming, believe me. I think Al’s plan is starting to take shape and with the recent draft we got some good position players and hitters plus we got Riley Greene last year. The team has a chance to be really good in the near future, I really believe that. I know Chris Ilitch and the Ilitch family and I think they’ll go out and get them over the hump by picking up a free agent or two, but I don’t think they’ll open up the purse strings foolishly.”
– – Quotes via Bill Dow, Detroit Free Press Link – –
