Chuck Klonke
Special to FOX Sports Detroit
A person is never ready to hear something like the news that came out of Thousand Oaks, Calif., this week.
Sparky Anderson's family released a statement saying that the former Tigers manager was under hospice care at his home. I knew his health had been failing in recent years, but I was shocked to hear that it had taken a drastic turn for the worse.
I was just as stunned to hear on Thursday afternoon that Anderson had died.
Had I known that, I would have made it a point to see him when he was in town last summer for his annual Catch golf outing. I would have liked to thank him once more for the many times he helped me while I was covering the Tigers for the Macomb Daily, the Daily Tribune and United Press International.
Those of us who made a living covering baseball in Detroit from 1979 through 1995 had it pretty easy.
Those were the seasons that Anderson managed the Tigers. We never had to scratch our heads, stumped about what we were going to put in the space allotted to the Detroit baseball coverage.
There were many times when I had a column to write and no clue as to what I was going to focus on.
Those were the days I made a beeline to Anderson's office once I arrived at old Tiger Stadium. I knew that once I sat down in there, I'd have more column fodder than I knew what to do with.
It would all start with some small talk. Then Sparky would offer an opinion about some recent happenings in the world of baseball. Pretty soon he was reminiscing about his days in the minor leagues, or his days managing the Big Red Machine in Cincinnati.
Anderson never imposed any time limits on the writers who visited his office. He was always accessible until the clubhouse was closed.
While Sparky was holding court, those of us in his office would be writing furiously to get everything he said down on paper. We all knew there would be several gems that would come out of Anderson's mouth.
Sure, Sparky said some outrageous things. Like the time he said, "We'd have to have a staff of 10 Dwight Goodens for Mickey Mahler not to be in the Tigers' rotation next year."
That remark was made after a mid-September game in 1985. Mahler relieved starter Juan Berenguer in the first inning of a game with the Yankees and pitched 7 2/3 innings of one-hit baseball to deny Phil Niekro his 300th victory.
Despite Anderson's proclamation, Mahler didn't make it out of spring training with the Tigers in 1986.
Anderson also predicted major league stardom for Detroit prospects Chris Pittaro and Torey Lovullo and called Kirk Gibson "the next Mickey Mantle."
While he might have been off the mark on some of those predictions, Anderson was almost always right when it came to managing a baseball game. There are few managers in the history of baseball who thought things out as thoroughly as Sparky did before he made a move.
He not only thought two or three batters ahead, or an inning or two ahead, he also considered the impact one of his moves would have on the rest of the season.
I can't remember who the batter was, but I asked Anderson why he didn't pinch-hit for this player in a situation that seemed like an obvious time to make a substitution.
"If I had pinch-hit for him then, I'd have lost him for the rest of the season," Anderson replied. "He'd have lost confidence in me and in himself."
Anderson always had the utmost respect for the game of baseball and wanted his players to have same respect. I recall him saying many times that he would never use a position player to pitch in a lopsided contest because that would show disrespect to the game.
He was definitely old school, but you couldn't help admiring the way he protected the game and his players.
Sparky and I always got along very well. However, I can remember one time when he and I failed to see eye-to-eye.
It involved an official scoring decision. I wasn't scoring that day, but the scorer called an error on a ball hit by one of the Tigers. It was one of those 50-50 calls that we scorers have to deal with quite often. You know as soon as you make the decision, half the folks are going to agree with it and the other half will think you're out of your mind -- or at the very least blind.
Anderson said that the ball should have been called a hit. His reasoning? "You're not going to get those calls on the road so you should get them at home."
I felt that it was my duty to defend the decision. I said that just because the official scorer in another city plays favorites, that was no reason for us in Detroit to stoop to that level. In other words, two wrongs don't make a right.
Anderson continued to argue the case for his players. I refused to budge from my point of view. We finally agreed to disagree. The next day Sparky was as kind and cordial to me as ever.
I wish today we could renew that conversation. It would be good to sit in his office again and listen to him talk about the game that was such a big part of his life for more than half a century.
(Chuck Klonke covered the Tigers for for the Macomb Daily, the Daily Tribune and United Press International. He remains an official scorer for the Tigers.)
Nov. 4, 2010
