Let’s see now: Last year the Detroit Tigers won 26 more games than the season before. So if they show the same amount of improvement this year, they should win 105 games. And if they do that, they are likely to win the American League pennant.
Detroit manager Buddy Bell reacted with amusement. He has heard that before.
“People have been asking, `What are we going to do an encore?’ ” Bell said. “I don’t know. I tell them to come back in July.”
Win or lose, Bell, who is starting his third season managing the Tigers, already has made his mark as one of the best young managers. The Tigers, who by all rights should have finished last in the American League East in 1997, finished third.
Despite losing their last five games, they were 16-6 in September. This is the most significant month for a manager with a second-division club because most of the players, weary of losing, are eager to concede and want to go home.
Essentially as a result of their September success, Bell received consideration for the AL Manager of the Year honors.
“I’d have voted for Buddy Bell,” said Davey Johnson, who won the award.
Bell enjoys managing and his players enjoy playing for him. Catcher Brad Ausmus, who played for Bell in 1996 and is now with Houston, is among those who predict a Hall of Fame managerial future for Bell. My sentiments, exactly. He’s made of the right stuff.
“It says something when his players want to play for him,” Ausmus declared. “That’s the biggest tell-tale sign there is.”
It isn’t easy for Bell to handle the accolades. He is a modest man and responds with an “aw-shucks” manner. As if he were only a spectator.
“I didn’t do anything,” Bell said of last season’s finish. “When we broke for the All-Star Game, the players pretty much understood they were becoming a good team and they started playing like it. As for me, I’m the same guy who lost 112 games the year before. I’d like to think I had something to do with it. But the players did it.
“And the coaches. I let the coaches do more. I gave them more responsibility and that helped me see things more clearly. I didn’t have 100 things on my mind.”
An 18-year major league third baseman, Bell is from a distinguished baseball family. His father, Gus, was a long-time big-league outfielder. A third generation of three more Bells is also on its way up the pike. The oldest, David, already has appeared with Cleveland and St. Louis.
Buddy Bell knows improvement is always anticipated. Some big-league players, also knowing this, sometimes are reluctant to reach for a major success. Billy Loes, a pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, insisted he never wanted to be a 20-game winner because if he did it once he would be expected to do it again.
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Bell never has been a member of this club.
“I realize everybody will be expecting more from us this season,” he said. “But that’s OK. It means we’re making progress.”
But he isn’t making big predictions. The Tigers have been shifted into the AL Central from the East, which is loaded with high-payroll clubs such as the Yankees, Baltimore, Boston and Toronto.
Bell says the Tigers, who have a comparatively modest player payroll of about $25 million, would have had difficulty competing against the Yankees and Baltimore, both stacked with high-salaried performers; their team payrolls are in excess of $70 million, almost three times as much as Detroit.
Now, Bell insisted the Tigers “will be a tough team to beat because our players play hard and care about each other.”
The Tigers only have two big-name players, pitcher Justin Thompson, a 15-game winner last season, and first baseman Tony Clark, who was among the league’s leading power-hitters with 32 home runs and 117 runs batted in.
Most of Clark’s home runs came early. Bell acknowledged that “the pitchers began to learn his swing,” which is a nice way to say they discovered his weaknesses.
“Young players (such as Clark) don’t make the adjustments as quickly as they need to,” Bell said. “And they also started pitching around him. But he’s a very intelligent player. He’ll be putting up big numbers for a long time.”
So too will manager Buddy Bell.