When Jim Leyland took over the Tigers in 2006, he made a deal with then-GM Dave Dombrowski: I'm keeping the players I like. Early in spring training that year, Leyland identified two young pitchers he wanted to bring north to Detroit: 21-year-old Joel Zumaya and 23-year-old Justin Verlander.
So he brought the request to Dombrowksi, who said, "Well, OK, but you don’t know for sure what they’re going to do."
Leyland's response?
"I remember this as yesterday. I said, 'No, I understand, Dave. And I agree with that. However, I know what the guys that have been here in the past few years are gonna do, and they haven’t done too good. I’d rather take a chance on some talent,'" Leyland recalled on the latest edition of 97.1 The Ticket's podcast The Time That. "And Dave was great about it. He said, 'Okay, we’ll take them.'"
Almost right away, Leyland filled in Zumaya. He sensed the high-strung youngster needed to know to ease his nerves. As for Verlander, the second overall pick two years prior, Leyland took his time.
"I made Verlander sweat it a little bit more, because they were different personalities," Leyland said. "I could see Zumaya was like a bull in a china shop, and I just wanted to get him calmed down and relaxed a little bit. I told him early on and he was like a kid in a candy store. I think he was scared to death to mention it to anybody. I don’t know if he ever did or not."
(Zumaya called his parents the moment he left Leyland's office, despite Leyland demanding that he keep the news to himself. "God bless him for doing that," Leyland said. "I would have done the same thing.")
"Verlander was a little bit different," Leyland went on. "I wanted to see a little bit more, even though I knew I was taking him. I wanted to see what he was going to pitch like when he was fighting for the team, if he felt like he was still fighting for the team. I knew what Zumaya was. He was going to be a one-inning guy that was going to throw it real hard and be really good.
"Verlander, I wanted to see just a little but more. I wanted to see him get closer to the end. A lot of times when guys get closer to the end in spring training and you start making cuts and all the lockers are getting emptied and all of a sudden, 'Oh my god, I’m still here,' then you want to watch them to see if they start pressing. So I actually kept it from Verlander a little bit longer, but I knew he was going to be on the team."
Both decisions, of course, worked out well. Verlander won 17 games and was named AL Rookie of the Year, and Zumaya finished third in the majors in holds in a terrific Tigers bullpen.
The 2006 season culminated in a trip to the World Series, with the Tigers toppling the Yankees and the Athletics along the way. The win over the Yankees in the ALDS was especially satisfying for Leyland, because he mentioned them in a letter he wrote to his players before the start of spring training.
The letter said, among other things, "I want our team to have that swagger. Not cocky, not arrogant, but I want us to have that swagger that the New York Yankees have, that when you take the field, 'Hey, this is the Detroit Tigers. These guys mean business.' It was kind of ironic that we ended up playing the Yankees in the postseason, and then after losing the first game we swept them," Leyland said.
The Tigers went on to sweep Oakland in the ALCS on the back of Magglio Ordonez's walk-off homer in Game 4, a memory that Leyland considers the fondest of his 22-year managerial career.
"That’s one that I smile about a lot. I don’t think I've ever seen a crowd react like that in all my life. They probably didn’t even react that much when we (the Florida Marlins) won the World Series (in 1997). I’ve said this always -- Detroit and St. Louis had the most pure fans in baseball. ... To see Magglio’s home run and to see all the white hankies, that's without question, I don’t know if I have any more memorable moment than that one. That was one you’ll never forget it," Leyland said.
Other highlights from Leyland's interview:
The one loss that keeps him up from his time as Tigers manager: "I think the gut-wrencher in 2013 (Game 3 of the ALCS against the Red Sox) because I truly thought that we had the best team and we didn’t win. The fact that we never got the final prize in Detroit, the biggest prize of all, it still eats at me a little bit. It’s not a matter of second guessing anything. It’s just that you wanted it so bad for yourself. Let’s not bullsh*t each other. We all talk about, 'Oh, we wanted it for Mr. Ilitch. We wanted it for the fans.' You want it for yourself and you want it for the players. And you also obviously want it for Mr. Ilitch and the fans. I thought we had good enough teams there a couple times to win it and we didnt do it."
The background of the Miguel Cabrera trade: "There’s always a lot of funny things that happen that the media doesn't ever find out for sure. I think the most amazing part about that was Mr. Ilitch said to Dave Dombrowski, before we ever went to the winter meetings, 'Is there any way we can get that Cabrera guy?' And they said, 'Well, I doubt that very much. I don’t think we have a chance to do that.' Lo and behold, we get down to the meetings and all of a sudden things pop up pretty quick and there's a serious conversation, and the next thing you know we’re having a press conference that we got Miguel Cabrera. It was unbelievable. I don’t know if Mr. I had a vision or why he said that, but that’s all true."
On his infamous argument with Barry Bonds during his tenure as Pirates manager: "That’s not something I’m very proud of, to be honest with you. It was a misunderstanding. (Barry, by the way, is one of my closest friends. I went out to his celebration last year when they retired his number in San Francisco. I spoke on the field, we’re very close.) But as I was walking by, I heard him talking with a coach and it wasn’t real good. It looked like he was giving the coach some sh*t. It was a misunderstanding on my part, on Barry’s part, and I snapped. A lot of people have said to me, 'Boy, we loved that,' but I certainly don’t want to that to be my moment."
On whether Bonds should be in the Hall of Fame: "That's for somebody else to decide, but I’m not going to duck your question. I’m going to say this. If Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds are not in the Hall of Fame, I think it’s a shame. I think that both of them belong in the Hall of Fame. I don’t vote and obviously other people have different opinions and I certainly respect those, but I think Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are both Hall of Famers and should be inducted."