If ever a man could be asked to leave his own wedding reception, it would be Jim Leyland.
Seriously, what is it with this guy? He stirs this hybrid emotion in the Detroit Tiger faithful that toes the line between astonishment and despondence like some masochistic field sobriety test. He's the five stages of death all rolled into one. One big long nicotine stick of addiction, obsession and reckless abandonment, lit ablaze at one end and sucked on at the other.
Leyland took a team picked to finish sixth in the five-team American League Central Division and worked them like a rosin bag. By the end of Spring, this squad sprung to life as if touched by Geppetto himself. Pitchers acquired for utility infielders became All-Star worthy. Arms that lost 17 games the previous year were on a tear to win 20. Powerless infielders were adjusting their stances and putting up anabolic numbers.
This man took a pitching staff and--with a heavy hand yet a helping hand nonetheless--crafted it into one of the best IN THE MAJORS. Counting pitches, measuring tendencies, playing game #161 like game #16... all the things that make those who turned the turnstiles at Tiger Stadium gargle with their own bile, he done did.
The Tigers jumped into first place before we were halfway through May, and have stayed there, alone or tied, ever since. That's a span of over four and a half months. Why they can't fill Comerica Park without mentioning the word "bobblehead" is as much a mystery as the skipper himself. The Lions can't show you four and a half months of first place without pulling out VHS tapes of Billy Sims. Yet week after water-tortured week they sell out despite their failure.
So WHAT keeps our opinions vacillating between AL Manager of the Year and "Fire His Ass"? Is it that scent he wears, a mix of musk and dog chaser? What so intrigues and repels the push-me-pull-you in us? Furthermore, what makes me delve so deeply into this psyche for the ages right now? (It's more Unhealthy Obsession than Detroit Sports, that's for sure!)
I'll tell you what keeps me rubbernecked. The feeling I get that the guy's got another great big inexplicable surprise waiting for us.
The feeling I have that tomorrow he'll be turning the Metrodome into a hospital zone. I don't know what he's got up his sleeve besides a crinkled pack of reds. But by the seventh inning whatever it is may just have 50,000 once-screaming fans quietly reading Twin Trivia in their game programs. And none of this Miguel Cabrera nonsense will enter into it. (And I'm one of the only writers in this town who won't talk about it.) In fact, the distraction may help the rest of the team focus and play better. They may actually prefer not being in Detroit right now.
Call it a feeling. Call it vicarious detox tremors. Call it that numb sensation immediately after you strike your index finger with your hammer. But oh it feels good.
Maybe just call it Leyland's modus operandi: that which is earned is best earned when all else is lost. Remember the Marlins? [And no I don't mean some feel-good movie about football-playing fish.] Remember that ramshackle team he led to a most improbable World Series victory over the heavily favored Cleveland Indians? This is the guy who made a PERENNIAL PLAYOFF REGULAR out of the Pittsburgh Pirates, for crissakes.
Just look back three years. Remember what stood between the 2006 Tigers and a Banner-Raising Ceremony? I'll remind you: a weekend series with the lowly Kansas City Royals at home. A Tiger (Woods) tap-in. So what'd they do? They surrendered 29 runs in those three games, that's what! The Twins passed them (who'd've thought?) and claimed the title Detroit had been missing since the Reagan years of 1987.
And with the Twins' Central Division title came a comparably so-totally-easy ALDS with the Oakland A's, for which they would have home-field advantage. Detroit on the other hand had to regroup somehow and travel to the Bronx to face a Yankee lineup that all but literally awoke the Yankee lineup of '27. Despite taking the Tigers to their first playoffs in 19 years--in his first season as manager mind you--Leyland was suddenly in the hot seat.
So how'd that seat work out? The A's routed the Twins in straight sets. The Tigers brought a youngin named Zumaya to Yankee Stadium who threw a seventh inning of 102- and 103-mph heat that blew up the Yankee bats, and they finished the pinstripes off in four games. Then they swept Oakland and entered their first World Series in more than two decades. As it turned out they didn't need home field, playing equal amounts of both during the run. And Jim Leyland became a folk hero.
Well my stories are like arrows, they may be long but there is a point at the end of it. And the point here is that Leyland seems to thrive when nobody expects it. There's no more "let's win early so we can rest our pitchers" mentality. They're 1-0 so far in games they're playing with their last life. And right now everyone in the entire city of... wait, cities of Minneapolis are writing the manager and his team off. JL himself said about the one-game playoff, "Nobody will think we've got a chance. So let's just see what happens."
I'm getting visions already, coach. Visions of a victory, and not a close one either. Hey, I predicted the Tigers would beat the Yankees in four games no less back in '06. And how many others were by my side then? [Hint, it was a very, very small number.] I can't shake the image of Rick Porcello taking a few shots but otherwise stifling the Twinkies through seven. Or the image of Tiger lumber cracking the ball into those monstrous gaps in the outfield, leading the kitties to a resounding win--despite Cabrera, despite the "collapse", despite everything.
Or the image of their stoic manager when it's over and the division's been won, looking just like... well, just like he does on any other day. Dude's a freak job, remember?
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