Like Martin Did, Maybe Time For Leyland To Pull A Rabbit Out Of His Hat

Eddie Brinkman was a fine fielding shortstop, one of the best of his time. He once played nearly half a season – 72 games – without committing an error. His glove was about as dependable as you’ll ever find.

The only problem with Brinkman was that he couldn’t hit a lick. He might as well have been swinging a limp noodle at the plate, rather than a piece of lumber. Edwin Albert Brinkman had nearly 6,000 official at-bats in the big leagues, and finagled them to the tune of a lifetime .224 average. In 1972, playing everyday for the Tigers, Brinkman managed a .203 mark – his steady glove keeping him in Billy Martin’s lineup. He had six home runs in 516 at-bats.

So you can only imagine the stunned looks on the faces of Tigers fans who crowded into Tiger Stadium on August 13, 1972 when it was announced over the public address system by the late, great Joe Gentile: “Batting fourth, playing shortstop, number 8, Eddie Brinkman.”

Eddie Brinkman??!! Batting cleanup? The spot of Horton and Killebrew and Aaron and Stargell? Skinny Eddie Brinkman, the man with the Golden Glove and the aluminum foil bat?

Today’s Tigers manager, Jim Leyland, has been reaching deep into his bag of tricks while his talented team struggles under the pressure of too much pre-season praise and regular season underachievement. He’s tried players switching positions. He’s tried yelling and screaming. He’s tried reminding them that they’re good. He’s tried players changing spots in the batting order.

Ahh, that last one – Martin tried that, too. But his method was a bit less scientific. And it’s why Brinkman was the Tigers’ cleanup hitter that August day.

The ’72 Tigers were an old, fragmenting team, still built around the core of the 1968 world champs. Precious few new, young players were being injected into the lineup, mainly because the Tigers’ farm system wasn’t growing any. And it was Martin’s charge to cajole this group of aging vets into one more act of triumph. That he pulled it off should go down as one of the greatest managerial displays ever seen in Detroit. But then again, no one said Billy couldn’t manage. I certainly never did.

So when Martin’s graybeards lost five out of six to slip into second place behind the Baltimore Orioles in the divisional race, Martin had an idea. And when Billy had an idea, there really wasn’t anything that was going to stop him from implementing it. Such headstrongness cost him a few jobs – in many different cities.

What would happen, Martin wondered, if he selected his next batting order out of a hat?

That’s right.

Place the names of the eight position players (there was no DH in 1972) into a baseball cap, and have someone reach in and pluck the names out. And that would be today’s batting order. No joke.

So Martin did that, and here’s what resulted:

1. Norm Cash 1B
2. Jim Northrup RF
3. Willie Horton LF
4. Eddie Brinkman SS
5. Tony Taylor 2B
6. Duke Sims C
7. Mickey Stanley CF
8. Aurelio Rodriguez 3B
9. Woodie Fryman P

Martin’s experiment could have been even more skewed, really. Besides Stormin’ Norman Cash batting leadoff (that was weird) and Brinkman hitting fourth, the rest of the lineup wasn’t all that out of whack.

Oh, and the Tigers won, beating the Indians 3-2 – Cash with two hits and Brinkman doubling home a run. Told ya Billy could manage a little bit.

Martin’s impulsiveness worked; will Jim Leyland follow suit?

Martin worked his magic through the end of the regular season, nudging his old-timers a half-game ahead of the Boston Red Sox to claim the AL East flag. Then they lost a heartbreaking ALCS, 3 games to 2, to the Oakland A’s. No more lineups drawn out of a hat, but maybe there should have been.

Jim Leyland won’t resort to such chicanery – I don’t think – in order to shake his team out of its malaise, which is now entering its second month. Leyland’s impulsive at times, but he’s no Billy Martin in that sense. Few ever were.

The other night, his Tigers again going gently into the night with nary a whimper, Leyland tried yet another tactic as he spoke into the tape recorders and microphones from behind his desk. He, in one breath, combined sober self-reflection with hope and optimism.

“It’s not that anybody’s not trying. We’re a slow team. When he don’t hit we look lethargic. But we’re a good team. I believe that. But it’s not because of lack of effort.”

The game before, the Tigers awoke from their daze long enough to rally for a 10-9 victory over the vaunted Red Sox. They did it against closer Jonathon Papelbon, who’s a genuine door slammer. Then they went back into hibernation the next night, prompting Leyland to wax sage and wise.

It’s only May 10, and Jim Leyland has run through most of his gamut with his maddening ball club.

But he hasn’t tried drawing a batting order out of a hat. Maybe he’s saving that one, like something in a glass case with the words “Break only in emergency” painted on it.

The old St. Louis Browns, owned by crazy Bill Veeck (as in wreck), once let their fans manage a game, complete with large placards that had the words YES and NO on either side. An attendant would flash a piece of poster board with a question like, “Infield in?” and then wait for the response from the section which possessed the placards. The Browns won that game, too.

Funny, huh?

Leyland A Dying Breed: The Quotable Manager

It was very early into a baseball season that would turn magical, when the very mention of the manager’s name would spread the lips of millions of Tigers fans into relieved smirks, then eventually into elated grins.

The crusty Jim Leyland regaled us with a story of a broken down car, an Ohio mechanic, some free tickets, and at the time I had no idea that it would serve as a sign of how things would fall into place for the Tigers in 2006.

A few hours before game time, Leyland accepts, sometimes begrudgingly, the intrusion of journalists into his modest office. Occasionally, there’s even something new to talk about. On this April afternoon nearly two years ago, Leyland, just a few games into his first season back managing in seven years, had something new to talk about.

“I was driving back thru Ohio,” he told us, talking about returning from an Easter-related family gathering in Pennsylvania. Next were details of a flat tire, a car he had to suddenly control at high speed, and a fortuitously located tire store.

The manager had gotten a lift, from a tow truck driver, to the tire store. But not before the driver saw the large duffel bag with the Tigers logo on it. This was squarely in Cleveland Indians country, too.

“Hey, Tigers!” the driver said, according to Leyland, when the tow truck guy started helping the stranded, gray-haired motorist. “I love the Tigers!”

Leyland had us set up for one of several funny lines.

“Yeah? You like the Tigers?” Leyland told us of his response to the young man. “Well, I’m the ***damned manager!”

The first round of laughter erupted in the office.

Later, after Leyland told of getting the royal treatment with his crippled car, he then related his telephone call back to Detroit. He wasn’t sure if he’d make it back in town in time to manage the next day’s game.

“(Third base coach Gene) Lamont says, ‘Jim’s stranded on the road? He’s not OK, is he?”
More laughter, uproarious this time. Lamont would have managed the game if Leyland wasn’t
OK.

And two lucky tire store employees were left free tickets to the next Tigers-Indians game in Cleveland, thanks to a grateful Jim Leyland, about to embark on his magical season in Detroit.

I have just done a very poor job in relating this story, because if ever the term “you had to be there” was appropriate, it’s when Leyland holds court and starts in.

Leyland, then only a few games into what would be a hallmark season in Detroit, is now so firmly ensconced in the manager’s chair with the Tigers that he could probably give Kwame Kilpatrick a run for his money for the mayor’s chair at City Hall.

He’s a dying breed, Jim Leyland is – and I’m very sad to say it. He’s the quotable baseball manager, the kind who gets your juices flowing when you see the punctuation “ “ appear in newspaper stories with his name attached to the “ ‘s.

Sometimes, Leyland is even quotable with the umpires — just not for family papers

I’m not talking Casey Stengel or Yogi Berra quotable, necessarily. Those were baseball geniuses who occasionally played the fool for good newspaper copy. Leyland is a straight shooter, and he uses wit and plain, brown paper-wrapped wisdom to illustrate his philosophy. But he’s also good for a crack-up.

Think of how many times you read something, to yourself, and break out into laughter. Not too often, for if someone sees you laughing with no one around, they’re liable to place a phone call to the men in white suits.

I cracked up, loud and long, when I read a simple Leyland description the other day. He was talking about the convenience of having Toledo as the Tigers’ Triple-A affiliate.

“Yeah, you can get a guy to Detroit in an hour,” Leyland told a lucky reporter last week. “In my first year managing in Pittsburgh, our minor league team was in Hawaii. You’d call a guy up, and ten days later he’d arrive.”

Like I said, you had to be there – in my brain, as I read the copy. I’m sorry – I thought it was hilarious.

Point being, look around the major leagues and tell me which managers make you look forward to the “ ‘s attached to their names. All I see are cookie cutter, generic, vanilla dudes.

We’ve been blessed in Detroit. We had Charlie Dressen, full of spit and vinegar, who unfortunately got himself so worked up as Tigers manager that he had not one, but two heart attacks during his run in the 1960s. The first one, in spring training 1965, he covered up by explaining that he had to tend to his wife in California. He checked himself into a hospital as soon as his plane touched down. But Dressen was quotable.

So, too, Billy Martin – who was also just plain wacky enough with his managerial moves and gamesmanship to make his verbal output just the cherry on top of a delicious baseball sundae.

Before long, Sparky Anderson blew into town. I needn’t say more.

Leyland doesn’t always enjoy his little media sessions, but you couldn’t tell by the generosity with which he scoops out the sundaes.

That first spring training, in 2006, Leyland was explaining why he lifted a young outfielder prospect from a game.

“Because of the way he was circling around out there looking for a fly ball,” Leyland said. “He took so many twists and turns, I almost smoked a whole Marlboro before he finally caught it.”

Come on – curl your lips into a grin. That’s good stuff.

Tigers Need Another Leyland Rant

(today, I’m cheating — sort of. Usually baseball posts appear on my other blog, but I’m taking a day off from OOB, so I give you today’s baseball post in this space, too)

Last year, it was all we heard. It was, we were told, one of the turning points of the season — and it had happened the day after Easter. Yet it was supposedly one of the things that helped propel the Tigers to the 2006 playoffs.

“It” was manager Jim Leyland’s tirade against his ballclub, behind closed doors but audible to reporters, after a humdrum loss to the Indians. The Monday game was the last of a four-game set and also “getaway day,” that baseball term for the last game played before traveling. And the Tigers, Leyland felt, were already mentally on the plane to Oakland. After winning two of the first three games of the series, the Tigers sleepwalked against the Tribe. And Leyland let them know it. Big time. Then he held a brief, terse postgame media session before ordering reporters out of his office.

Last year, if you asked any Tiger who was present, you’d have been told that Leyland’s rant was much-needed, and that it resonated for the entire season. You’d have been told that, at that moment, Jim Leyland secured a firm hold on his ballclub.

So where’s the rant this summer? Where’s the outrage?

The Tigers are 16-29 in their last 45 games, a .356 winning percentage. Extrapolated over an entire season, that’s a 58-104 record, which brings back chilling memories of just about any season from 1994-2005.The hitters can’t buy a clutch single, or even a gosh darn sacrifice fly, to save their souls. The bullpen leaks like an old radiator. The starting pitching is Jekyll and Hyde. There’s an overall malaise. Even so-called “big” victories, like the 3:30 a.m. homer to beat the Yankees, don’t seem to have any carryover effect at all. It’s like the Tigers’ momentum is magically erased when they get out of bed the next morning.

It’s probably desperate bleatings from an ink-stained wretch wearing a sour puss, but I’d have liked to have seen another Leyland explosion, somewhere during this horrific 45-game stretch. Maybe he’s already done it, again behind closed doors but just not as loud so as to alert the media guys. Even if he has, fine. Do it again — and make it a little more public this time. Light into these guys a bit. All I hear is how good of a team the Tigers have. As recently as last week, the malaise still dripping over the team, Leyland spoke enthusiastically about the playoffs and about how good of a team he has.

Enough.

Yes, injuries (read: Gary Sheffield) have played a factor into why 2007 ain’t 2006, or anything close to it. But there are still enough big league ballplayers in the Tigers’ clubhouse to make a go of things, if only they’d engage in outpatient surgery to have their noggins removed from their posterior.

We need more of THIS Jim Leyland to rear his head

The endless array of popups and strikeouts with runners in scoring position and less than two outs is mind-boggling, considering we’re talking over a quarter of a season of bad baseball. The inability of the bullpen to hold a lead, or the silly game of “Guess which starting pitcher is showing up today?” the rotation has been playing, is getting real old.

Yet Leyland — and I like the guy, don’t get me wrong — just seems helpless, without any energy or vinegar. Enough is enough. Can’t he kick over a buffet table or toss some equipment around? Heck, when was the last time he even got kicked out of a game?

The Tigers are sinking like a lead balloon, and I wish the skipper would act like he’s offended by what he’s seeing. Then again, it’s probably too late anyway.

I fear he had his chance, but now it’s gone.