It has been anything but roses for Jim Leyland of the Florida Marlins. It generally is agreed Leyland is the best, or certainly among the best, of today’s major-league managers, but he could have wasted away in the minors if it weren’t for Tony La Russa and Roland Hemond.
“Absolutely,” Leyland said. “If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be sitting where I am today.”
It was in 1982. La Russa was about to enter his third full season as White Sox manager. Hemond ran the front office.
La Russa, who had handled the Sox’s Iowa farm team in the high minors, told Hemond about Leyland, who had managed against him in the American Association. La Russa said he wanted Leyland as his third-base coach.
“We’ll bring him up,” Hemond said.
And so began the remarkable success story of James Richard Leyland, a career minor-leaguer out of Toledo.
“Tony took me out of the bushes. I think about that a lot,” Leyland said before his National League champion Florida Marlins defeated the Cleveland Indians 7-4 in Saturday night’s World Series opener.
A failed catcher, Leyland had an undistinguished seven-year playing career–a .222 average with a total of four home runs and 102 RBIs.
The property of the Detrot Tigers, Leyland caught the eye of the late Jim Campbell, the Detroit general manager who asked Leyland if he would be interested in serving as a player-manager.
Leyland leaped at the opportunity, but after 18 years in baseball, he still hadn’t won promotion to the big leagues.
“I would have stayed two or three more years, but that’s all,” Leyland insisted. “I figured I had put in enough time. If I hadn’t made it to the big leagues by then I decided I would quit.”
But La Russa came to the rescue. From 1982 through ’85, Leyland was LaRussa’s third-base coach. His second season in Chicago was the most exciting. The White Sox won the American League West by a record 20 games but lost to Baltimore in the pennant playoffs.
“It was the first time I had any exposure at the major-league level,” Leyland recalled.
At the end of the season, he was interviewed by two clubs looking for a manager.
Meanwhile, his reputation spread. But there was one embarrassing night.
“We were playing Milwaukee in Comiskey Park,” Leyland said. “It was a real marathon. We had a man on first in the 23rd inning. I think there was one out. The batter singled to center. The center-fielder was slow getting to the ball. He wasn’t dogging it, just taking his time.
“The runner kept coming to third. I was thinking about waving him in, but at the last second I held him up. When he went down, my little finger caught his little finger.
“He got back to third base OK, but some of the Milwaukee players were in their clubhouse watching the game on television and told the umpires I had touched the base runner. So they had to call him out. There was a big crowd. I had nowhere to go.
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“I just had to stand there and listen to the boos. It was not just embarrassing. I was scared to death.”
After the ’85 season, Leyland finally became a big-league manager. Syd Thrift, general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates, gave him the job.
“It wasn’t that much of a risk,” Thrift said later. “I got half a dozen calls from baseball people. Some of them I hadn’t seen in years. They all said the same thing: `Hire Jim Leyland.’ “
Leyland turned the Pirates around. Pittsburgh captured three consecutive division titles from 1990 to ’92, but never a pennant. Last October he agreed to manage the Marlins, and in his first season guided them to the NL flag.
“I owe it to my players,” Leyland said. “I didn’t win the pennant. They did.”
Then, as he walked away, Leyland added: “If it weren’t for Tony La Russa, I would have gone home a long time ago.”