After hearing that Jim Leyland finally stepped down as manager of the Tigers, I had to go find this paragraph I once wrote about the old dude some years ago...
"Jim Leyland, hiding in the darkest end of the dugout, seems
confused and angy, looking like that blind rat in The Secret of Nimh – his thin
fragile face holding on to whispy gray hairs collecting in a bushier version of
the dictator's moustache; strawlike outgrowths of dead white whiskers packed
tightly, as tidily trimmed and pruned as that frail body of his comically
suited up in tight baseball pants and pitcher’s windbreaker. A hollow shell of
a baseball coach no longer permitted to smoke in the dugout, a nervous wreck. No longer capable of helping his players in any way whatsoever, he finds himself unable to even
follow the game he thought he still understood. Sad, in the way an Alzheimers
victim slowly loses touch with what the rest of us call ‘reality’. Frightful,
in his resemblance to a bitter old SS rat. Weak from his conservative,
stubborn and closed-minded ways. The Tigers lose again."
Photo borrowed from The Onion: "Angry Jim Leyland's Mustache Keeps Falling Off While Yelling at Team" (July 17, 2008).
But after seeing that clip of Leyland dancing in the locker room after clinching the AL Central for the third consecutive year, he looked almost...human. And I almost feel sorry for the guy.
What still bothers me is that Illich, Dombrowski and whoever else is part of the Tigers' brass didn't have the cojones to hire a Latino manager -- former Detroit infielder/outfielder Carlos Guillen comes to mind -- to lead Los Tigres to the World Series. Brad Ausmus? Seriously?
Lame.
