DETROIT -- What will be Jim Leyland’s legacy as manager of the Detroit Tigers?
Well, for starters, he'll be remembered as the second-greatest manager the franchise has had after Sparky Anderson.
In some ways, he was better than Sparky.
Sparky inherited a team loaded with talent that was ready to win. He molded them into champions, but the World Series win of 1984 came six years after his arrival.
Leyland, on the other hand, took a proud franchise that had suffered through a dozen straight losing seasons and won a pennant in his very first season.
“The thing I’m proudest of is, I came here to make talent a team,” Leyland said.
He read the players the riot act early in that first season of 2006, and let them know there was only one way that would be tolerated.
That wasn’t necessarily his way. It was the right way.
There are those looking to reinvent the wheel in baseball, but Leyland was old school. You show up on time, work hard, play your best and must be a great teammate.
It sounds simple, but there are plenty of managers who can’t get teams to do those things.
By doing so, the Tigers went from winning 71 games in 2005 to 95 wins the next year under Leyland, and the laughingstock franchise that lost 119 games in 2003 quickly became a model franchise.
Getting to the World Series twice in eight years, winning three consecutive Central Division titles and 700 games are supreme accomplishments.
Leyland and general manager Dave Dombrowski -- one of the longest-tenured combos in baseball -- made it happen.
It was Dombrowski who literally patted Leyland on the back during Monday's press conference when the manager, who swore he wouldn't become emotional, became emotional time and again.
Leyland could be gruff and rip you to shreds one day, and hug you the next day. That went for reporters and his players.
The last thing Leyland did before leaving the banquet room at Comerica Park -- where the press conference was held -- was grab Detroit News Tigers beat writer Tom Gage and hug him like a brother while patting him on the back and thanking him. Gage has covered the club since Sparky was hired in 1979.
It was pretty emotional, and it reminded me of the time I waited for my colleagues to clear out of Leyland’s office at the Rogers Centre in Toronto to tell him I was leaving the beat in 2011. He was shocked, uttered some endearing words and came from behind his desk to hug me and tell me he would miss me.
Loyalty is at the core of everything Leyland does and feels.
“You gave me everything you had,” Leyland said, “and I’ll give you everything I had.”
Justin Verlander was a rookie when Leyland came to Detroit. He was talented but hard-headed, and Leyland goaded him daily to get him to learn how to pitch rather than just throw.
There was a day in Kansas City when Leyland took off after him in the trainer’s room, chastising him for refusing to change on some important point.
Then there was a day in May 2011, after Verlander threw his second no-hitter, when Leyland said Verlander had grasped everything and was ready to finally become great. He won the MVP and Cy Young Award that season and remains as feared a pitcher as there is in the game.
When asked for a special reaction from a player after he told them about his decision to step down after the Game 6 ALCS loss in Boston, Leyland said:
“Justin Verlander was a special one. I think probably normally he doesn’t like me. He even told me he loved me. That was touching.”
Verlander tweeted from @JustinVerlander:
“What an honor playing my first 8 years with Jim Leyland. A great manager and an even better person. Thanks for believing in me.”
He wasn’t just a manager to the stars, though. Leyland loved all 25 of his players.
“It was as much fun to manage Ramon Santiago as Miguel Cabrera and Justin Verlander," Leyland said.
That's how you build a team -- by not just giving lip service to your star players, but respecting all of them.
“What you see is what you get with Skip,” said super utility player Don Kelly. “He really cares deeply about his players. You want to run through walls for him.”
All-Star right fielder Torii Hunter, the other player to attend the press conference, said: “Guys don’t want to fail him. I want to give him my all. You get to the point where you love him.”
Leyland said that the players are what he'll miss most and were the reason he often got weepy Monday.
The only thing he missed in Detroit was winning the World Series, having lost in five games to the St. Louis Cardinals in 2006 and getting swept by the San Francisco Giants in 2012.
“I still think I’ve got a chance to win a World Series ring,” said Leyland, who's staying on as a consultant to Dombrowski. “Hopefully, they’ll give me one.”
He wore his heart on his sleeves, and I think the reason Leyland did that was because -- even at age 68 with 1,769 wins under his belt -- he was pinching himself until the day he took off the uniform of the team that signed him out of high school.
“I was here because I liked to compete,” Leyland said. “I wasn’t good enough to play. I hit .222 in the minor leagues and got released, and I thought I’d work someplace in Perrysburg, Ohio.”
Instead, he impacted players over four different decades, prodded Barry Bonds to greatness, won a World Series with the Florida Marlins, resurrected the Tigers, and put together a career worthy of consideration for Cooperstown.
