Sliders: Jim Leyland's 'springboard' job to becoming a major-league manager (2024)

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Jim Leyland will enter the Hall of Fame next weekend with no logo on his cap. His plaque will list the four teams he managed across 22 major-league seasons: the Pittsburgh Pirates, Florida Marlins, Colorado Rockies and Detroit Tigers. Coaching stops are never part of the gold-plated itinerary.

But when Leyland takes the podium, a week from Sunday at the Clark Sports Center in Cooperstown, N.Y., he will remember the Chicago White Sox, who launched his major-league career in 1982. As a third base and outfield coach for four years, Leyland was part of a prolific group of baseball minds who would impact the sport for decades.

“I’m going to mention this at the Hall of Fame: the minor leagues was my stepping stone to getting a job at some point, but that coaching job in Chicago was my springboard to a manager’s job,” Leyland said this week in a Zoom call with reporters. He added: “It was kind of like my last test to see if I was going to be ready for the manager’s job.”

The truth, Tony La Russa said, is that Leyland was ready well before he joined La Russa’s staff when both were 37 years old. They had played against each other in the Southern League, where Leyland, a catcher, stalled out with a .222 career average. La Russa kept playing — he hit .199 in the majors — as Leyland started managing in Detroit’s farm system.

Their paths crossed in 1979, when both managed in Triple A, La Russa in Des Moines, Iowa, and Leyland in Evansville, Ind. La Russa noticed the respect Leyland commanded from his players, the way they concentrated in pregame drills, competed hard in games yet still seemed to have fun. A friendship bloomed.

“We were a couple of nothin’s, and we shared a lot of what we were doing,” said La Russa, who hired Leyland after his second full season in Chicago. “He knew more about managing when he got there than I did. But we had this desire to learn.”

Congrats to former Chicago White Sox coach Jim Leyland (1982-85) on his election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2024.

Leyland’s election now makes it four HOFers that either played, coached or managed the 1983 AL West Champion White Sox. pic.twitter.com/qzBSWmFKsO

— Xavier Sanchez (@Xavier_Sanchez4) December 4, 2023

It was an ethos that helped define the organization. Bill Veeck still owned the team when La Russa was hired in August 1979 — three weeks after the infamous “Disco Demolition Night” promotion — and Veeck, a Hall of Fame executive, was famously big on ideas but short on cash.

“We were so small,” Dave Dombrowski said, “everybody worked together on everything.”

Dombrowski, now the Phillies’ president of baseball operations, started his career with the White Sox in 1978 as a 22-year-old administrative assistant. (A Chicago native, he lived at home on his $8,000 salary and paid his parents $25 a week in rent.) General manager Roland Hemond — a future winner of the Hall of Fame’s Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award — gave Dombrowski an invaluable all-around education, encouraging him to shadow the team’s scouts in Latin America, ride buses with the minor league affiliates and meet the towering GMs of the era.

“He’d say, ‘Any question you have, you ask me any time — any time — and if I don’t know the answer, I’ll find out for you,” Dombrowski said. “And he would pick up the phone and call.”

Hemond was the kind of boss, La Russa said, who would wait a week to show up to spring training as a way to empower a young manager. And when La Russa recommended Leyland for a job opening — rather than promote from within — Hemond trusted his judgment.

“An organization is always better when you bring in special talent,” La Russa said Hemond told him. “And so Jim came in there, and it was Charley Lau’s first year with us, too. They spent a lot of time together, and before spring training was over, Charley Lau, the veteran, said to me, ‘I think Jim Leyland may be the best third-base coach I’ve ever seen.’”

Lau was a highly influential hitting coach, emphasizing weight shift and a middle-away approach that had helped vault the Royals’ George Brett to stardom. The pitching coach of those White Sox teams, former catcher Dave Duncan, became another giant in his field, serving many years with La Russa in Oakland and St. Louis.

Leyland coached the outfielders. He’d never played the position, but he’d paid attention.

“We didn’t have coaches in those days in the minor leagues — you’re pretty much by yourself — so in spring training, you went over everything with the base running guy, the infield guy, the outfield guy,” Leyland said. “And you remembered all the things we talked about that were good drills to use.”

Leyland studied, too — he called Hoot Evers, a longtime outfielder he knew from the Tigers’ system — and applied his own direct, plainspoken personality to convey his points. His breadth of wisdom and blunt delivery made Leyland a resource for fellow coaches.

“If I had a question about how a pitcher should be used or something like that, I could talk to Tony or I could talk to Jimmy and get really good information because of their background and their knowledge,” Duncan said. “He contributed in all areas of the game — and I know that he and Tony talked a lot about managing.”

La Russa and Leyland would break down opposing managers’ strategies after games, studying master tacticians like Sparky Anderson, Gene Mauch, Billy Martin and Earl Weaver. This was after reporters had critiqued La Russa’s moves, with Leyland sitting in for many postgame media sessions.

“We always talked about, ‘If you’re afraid (of something) you have to answer after the game, you’ll never be a good manager,’” Leyland said. “I remember that very clearly and I kept with that my entire career.”

Talking the game was a hallmark of the White Sox, even after Veeck sold the team to Jerry Reinsdorf in 1981. Hemond had a knack for adding veterans with winning pedigrees to the clubhouse — Carlton Fisk, Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Greg Luzinski, Tom Paciorek, Dick Tidrow, Sparky Lyle and others.

They shared knowledge with teammates and coaches after games, while executives, scouts, writers and others — even, at times, Max Patkin, the Clown Prince of Baseball — would gather in the Bard’s Room on the press level to swap stories over postgame beers.

“Baseball was in your blood, it was your life,” Dombrowski said. “And there wasn’t a lot of other things in people’s life going on. Baseball is what you did, and you talked it.

“It just doesn’t exist that way anymore, because you don’t have that time to just sit around and talk baseball. Life’s more complicated. We’ve got social media. We have much more emphasis on the family aspect, which is not bad. It’s just a whole different life.”

The White Sox of that era peaked in 1983, snapping a 24-year postseason drought by going 99-63 to capture the AL West crown before losing to Baltimore in the ALCS. When Reinsdorf elevated broadcaster Ken “Hawk” Harrelson to lead baseball operations two years later, the braintrust started to crack; by the end of 1986, Hemond, La Russa, Duncan and Dombrowski would all be gone.

La Russa and Duncan would win championships in Oakland and St. Louis, and Dombrowski would build the Marlins’ World Series winner in 1997 — with Leyland as manager. They also teamed up for two pennants with the Tigers, the last stop in Leyland’s managerial career, which also included three division titles for Pittsburgh and 1,769 victories.

Only eight managers in history have more total wins than Leyland with winning records in both the regular season and postseason. One is La Russa, but he knows where he ranks.

“In our generation of managers, which includes all the great Hall of Famers like Sparky and Dick Williams and Earl and those guys, I think Jim Leyland is the best of all of us,” La Russa said. “Because he’s the complete manager.”

Gimme Five

Five bits of ballpark wisdom

Royce Lewis on being the No. 1 overall draft pick

The 60th annual MLB Draft takes place on Sunday in Arlington, Texas, with the Guardians picking first overall. Four future Hall of Famers have gone first in the draft — Harold Baines (1977), Ken Griffey Jr. (1987), Chipper Jones (1990) and Joe Mauer (2001) — plus other superstars like Gerrit Cole, Bryce Harper, Alex Rodriguez and Darryl Strawberry.

More recently, one of the better first overall picks has been Twins third baseman Royce Lewis, the top choice in 2017 out of JSerra Catholic High School in San Juan Capistrano, Calif. The Twins gave Lewis $6.725 million to sway him from UC-Irvine, and he’s given them star-level production — a .303/.361/.584 line — when healthy.

Lewis, 25, tore his right ACL in 2021 and again in 2022, and has missed time this season with a strained quadriceps and an adductor strain. Even so, he’s a foundational piece for the Twins, and he shared some insights for prospects on what to expect on draft day and beyond.

You’ll get every chance to succeed. “For most number one picks, it seems like you get pushed to be great. I think that’s the pro of being like a top prospect in general, it doesn’t have to be No. 1. But you’re getting pushed to be great, too, whereas you really have to fight your way to be seen if you’re Mr. Irrelevant in the draft or even just like a mid-round pick. You have to show the success rate at a higher, faster pace because you have to prove to them that I belong here, each and every year versus (the team) doing everything they possibly can because of the money they invested in a top prospect. That’s just the business part of it.”

You’re still one of the guys. “I never saw myself as different, and I still don’t see myself as any different than anyone else. I’m just trying to live my dream and make a dream come true for me. And that’s playing in the big leagues. And that’s what I can imagine everyone’s dream is here. That’s kind of what made it easier for me personally: I’m playing with my brothers, my homies, my best friends and trying to make a living, that’s it.”

Fans know all the top prospects, not just you. “I was fortunate enough to have really good first-round picks, or just players in general on my team, going up throughout the minors. Our team was really nasty, especially in Cedar Rapids, so it didn’t feel any different. There were always a bunch of our guys getting cards signed, and we were like always late to our buses because we had people signing. And we had fun with it too.”

College is a powerful fallback option. “Honestly, my goal was to be a top 10 pick so I didn’t have to go to college. And luckily enough, I made that dream come true. At the time, I was still very open to going to college, but I knew that my parents wouldn’t let me go (pro) unless the money made sense. Because to skip something so great in your life — college, getting that degree, making sure that you’re set up just in case baseball doesn’t work, it had to be life-changing money. And for me, I got blessed to be first overall, so that kind of made the choice for me.”

Be prepared for surprises. “I found out with everyone else. My team was delayed, I was in L.A. and they were in New York, so probably people in the East Coast found out before I did. I don’t think I was the obvious pick for the Twins. I don’t know what they were doing in the war room there, but I personally didn’t even think that that was a chance because I thought they were going pitcher. The Reds kind of flat-out told me, ‘We’re picking a pitcher (at No. 2 overall) no matter what.’ And they had Hunter Greene, Mackenzie Gore, Brendan McKay, three really good options at the top that were being talked about. So I only met with their local scout one time.

“The Twins, we met with quite a bit, but I never left feeling like they really wanted me. They were very nice, very cordial, very professional about it, but just always even-keeled. The Padres and the Braves were three and five, and they were all in. They really wanted me to play for them, especially the Padres, like, ‘Hey, you’re a hometown kid, only an hour and a half from your house, we want you to be our future center fielder. We think you’re a huge asset to our team in the future.’ And the Braves were telling me all about their plans to build the new stadium that they built. So I was all locked in on (being taken) somewhere in there, and I’d kind of taken my eyes off the Twins — so when it happened and I didn’t get a call from them beforehand, I was shocked. But I was blessed with an opportunity to be picked where I was picked, and now meet all my best friends and colleagues and staff. I couldn’t be in a better situation with Minnesota. It’s been an amazing life for me.”

Off the Grid

A historical detour from the Immaculate Grid

Tom Brunansky — First round pick/First baseman (minimum 1 game)

Tickets for Monday’s All-Star Home Run Derby in Texas range from $150 or so in the top deck to more than $3,000 in the front row behind home plate. For the inaugural edition, at the Metrodome in Minneapolis in 1985, tickets cost $2.

“It was so casual … it wasn’t a big production at all,” Tom Brunansky said a while back, when he was hitting coach for the Minnesota Twins. “It was like, ‘Hey, this is what we’re going to try to do, what do you think?’”

Brunansky was a very obscure answer on last Sunday’s Grid, which asked for a former first-round pick who also played at least one game at first base. While Brunansky is mostly remembered as a Twins right fielder, he was a first-round pick by the Angels in 1978 who briefly played first base later in his career, for St. Louis, Boston and Milwaukee.

His timing was perfect for his lone All-Star selection: with the 1985 event at his home park, Brunansky was one of 10 hitters to take part in that very first Derby. The field included five Hall of Famers — Carlton Fisk, Eddie Murray, Jim Rice, Cal Ripken Jr. and Ryne Sandberg — plus Brunansky, Jack Clark, Steve Garvey, Dale Murphy and Dave Parker.

Parker, then with the Cincinnati Reds, won it with a humble six home runs, which remained the Derby record until Ripken slugged 12 in Toronto in 1991. The format has changed many times, and the overall record for a single Derby (including swing-off tie-breakers) is 91, by Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in Cleveland in 2019. Pete Alonso has the most career Derby homers with 195.

Classic Clip

J.R. Richard, 1980 All-Star Game

If you’re nostalgic for players wearing their team uniforms in the All-Star Game — before MLB sold out to Nike in 2021 — you’ll love the 1980 edition from Dodger Stadium. The starting pitcher for the National League, J.R. Richard, looks majestic in the “tequila sunrise” jersey of the Houston Astros. But the real treat is his pitching.

Richard was at the height of his powers here, 30 years old, five years into a prime that might have led him to Cooperstown. No pitcher at the time had ever been taller than Richard, and nobody dominated like him, not even his Astros teammate, all-time strikeout king Nolan Ryan.

“Both of them were nasty, but J.R. was the nastiest,” Dusty Baker, who fanned 24 times against Richard, told me for my book on pitching. “He was 6-foot-8, big old hands; the ball looked like a golf ball in his hands. He had a big Afro and he pulled his hat way down, so you couldn’t see his eyes, and he was wild. Boy, was he nas-tee! And the nastiest part about him is you know it’s 60 feet, 6 inches from the mound, right? He was throwing from about 50 feet. You had no time to pick up the ball.”

Now imagine trying to do it at the 1980 All-Star Game. It’s twilight in Los Angeles, so Richard is baked in sunlight while the hitters are in the shade. Nobody in the American League lineup has faced him except pitcher Steve Stone. And in the first inning, up comes the hitter who would become the career leader in strikeouts: Reggie Jackson.

“He figures he’s gonna go out there (for) two innings, I’ll just stay with the fastball and take my chances,” says Don Drysdale in the ABC booth.

“With his hummer,” says Keith Jackson, his partner. “That’s about all he needs.”

Oh, no, no, no. Richard indeed starts off with fastballs, making the great slugger flinch on a high, inside offering that runs the count to 3-1. Then comes perhaps the most hellacious slider ever unleashed: 94 mph, unheard of at the time.

It sends Jackson stumbling out of the box, losing his balance like a surfer jolted by a sudden, violent riptide. Another slider, buried in the dirt, fans Jackson on a tentative half-swing, before Richard finishes with a second shutout frame.

“I feel real strong now,” he says in a mid-game interview with Bob Uecker. “I felt I could have gone back out there.”

At that moment, it would have been inconceivable to think that Richard’s career would be over in a week. But he’d been dealing with arm fatigue already, and would leave his next start in the fourth inning. He went home to Louisiana, saw doctors — and suffered a career-ending stroke during a workout at the Astrodome in late July.

Richard became homeless for a period in the 1990s, living under a bridge in Houston. He later connected with a local pastor, found work for an asphalt company and spent a lot of time fishing and grilling. He wrote a memoir in 2015 and said in an interview then that the memory of his glory days — which peaked at that long-ago All-Star Game — always brought him joy.

“It was grand, to be in control,” said Richard, who died in 2021. “I felt like I was the baddest lion in the valley.”

(Top photo of Leyland and La Russa at spring training in 1986, Leyland’s first season as a major-league manager: George Gojkovich / Getty Images)