Jim Leyland isn't just headed to the Hall of Fame this summer. His No. 10 is headed to the outfield bricks in Comerica Park.
The Tigers announced Monday that they are retiring Leyland's number on Aug. 3 prior to their game against the Royals, the highest honor they can bestow upon one of the most successful managers in franchise history.
Leyland led the Tigers to two American League pennants, three AL Central titles and 700 regular season wins -- plus 25 more in the playoffs -- during his eight-year tenure as skipper from 2006-13. He'll join Sparky Anderson, who led the club to the 1984 World Series title, as the second manager to have his number retired by the Tigers.
"Jim Leyland is a quintessential baseball man and embodies so much of what our fans in Detroit loved and appreciated about his time as our manager,” Tigers owner Chris Ilitch said in a statement released Monday.
The 79-year-old Leyland, who's served as a special advisor to the Tigers since stepping down as manager, said in a statement that "having the opportunity to manage in Detroit was one of the great privileges of my career and I still look back fondly on the memories that we shared with Tigers fans. This is a humbling moment for me and an honor that I will cherish forever."
Leyland said last year, following his election to the Hall of Fame, that the best season of his 22-year managerial career "might be 2006 in Detroit ... because a couple years before they had lost so many games and the team, not me personally, kind of turned the city around. We did more than win games. I think we actually did turn the fanbase around a little bit, so that could be the No. 1."
That was Leyland's first season in Detroit, which crested in the Tigers' first trip to the World Series since their '84 title.
"We just got on a roll," he said. "We came in with the attitude that we had to show people we meant business, and I wanted to turn talent into a team. I think we did that, but (I was) just a small part of it. The city got back into it, there’s no question. But I’ve always said, Detroit and St. Louis have the best baseball fans in the country because of their knowledge of the game. It just all sort of meshed together. The players started believing in themselves, the fans starting believing in the players and it was just a great relationship."
Ilitch went on to say that Leyland, who also managed the Pirates for 11 years, the Marlins for two and the Rockies for one before taking over in Detroit, "demonstrated a gritty passion in leading his team, a relentless pursuit of excellence, and an uncanny ability to connect with people throughout his career."
"Given those intangibles, combined with his tenure as a winning manager who was instrumental in an era of success, I feel it’s only fitting that he now has his number retired and a permanent place on the Comerica Park wall," said Ilitch.
Leyland's number retirement will come two weeks after he's formally inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown next month. In addition to Anderson, he'll join Al Kaline, Charlie Gehringer, Hal Newhouser, Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker, Hank Greenberg, Willie Horton and Jack Morris in the Tigers' pantheon of retired numbers.