MLB Jim Leyland: A Life in Baseball

welcome to mlb network presents this tuesday marlins park will play host to the all-star game marking the first time a midsummer classic will be played in miami now 20 years ago south florida experienced another baseball first when the marlins then the florida marlins won the franchise's first world series title their manager that season was jim leland earlier this year the now 72 year old leland guided team usa to their first world baseball classic championship after spending nearly two decades in the tigers minor league system as a player and then a manager leland finally got his shot at the big leagues as a coach for tony larussa's staff with the white sox in 1982 four years after that he took over as the manager of the pirates beginning one of the most successful managerial careers of his generation but more than any of his many accomplishments if you ask those who know him best they'll tell you there's no one quite like jim leland how brutally honest is you who's going to shoot you straight right is that kind of oh yeah you don't have any problems with that one was always honest and if he hurt your feelings in the process of telling you something honest he didn't care because he thought it was in your best interest he just had very little uh tolerance for not playing hard he might not be able to get it bust your ass back there you never know he's like get yourself ready to play if you're not i'll find someone else that will and that was a strict message yeah he's old school old school means you do things the right way jim leglen is i think the deepest most knowledgeable baseball man that i know is still living jim was not just smart but he was gutsy he was going to take the best shot to win did not care about things like this i did my job and i can look in the mirror he not only respects the game of baseball well he respects people [Applause] thanks jimmy i appreciate you saying that jim liam never takes credit for a win and always takes blame for a loss and as a player you can really appreciate that the game belongs to your players and they're the guys that want them i didn't have a lot to do with it i think he's one of the most amazing leaders in any sport of our time i think the great leaders are vulnerable and i think skip's one of those guys you know he always shows his human side don't get caught up in the expectations get caught up in how we're going to live up to those expectations there are so many personalities to this man i'll be having a flame with a pretty young thing until early he was like one of the guys okay but when time came he was a boss oh is he hot and that was the genius of jim leela you knew his clubhouse period i do know one thing i am the damn manager and i'm going to run this damn team somebody asked jim one time he said do you want a captain who are you going to anoint captain he says there's only one captain around here and it's me this is my ship and i run it how i want to run it and people aren't happy with that they can go to another team i can't help it he does appear gruff and when i tell people he's the funniest man on earth they go he's funny jim i said oh unbelievable his blow-ups were were very very legendary i was in the clubhouse once he took the spread [Music] when he was totally naked now that's an ugly scene to think about i think we were playing the rangers and i think we got swept and after we got swept he came in and he was just he was beside himself matt he's like just be careful man if you go out tonight maybe you want to grab a pop or something be careful because you just might get arrested for impersonating a baseball player and like all of a sudden i just had to put my hands down because i started dying laughing you know i mean that he storms up and he's dead serious and he'd talk and he'd scream and then he'd leave and he walked down the hall about a minute goes by we're all sitting in our locker waiting is he done is he done well the rookie players they were stupid they started to get undressed and everybody was getting ready to get up and the coaches said he's not done stay there boys so he's coming back [Music] he's still yakking at the top of his you guys you think i'm gonna let you just man yeah he'd walk in and walk out we kind of knew it maybe about six or seven times you'd hear him down the hall yelling at himself yelling at the walls then two minutes later he walks back in to finish ain't nothing and i'll tell you one more thing and one more thing walks back into his office all right i'm [Music] done so here we are overlooking pittsburgh it's a football town first and foremost everybody knows that the penguins have won stanley cups a lot of people might look back on jim leland's career someday likely in the hall of fame lots of success and say why would you take this job in the mid 80s but at that time it was the only job right it was the only job i was offered and somebody asked me that why would you take on that team yeah quite truly i was a minor league guy what am i going to do am i going to get a job like the yankees or the st louis cardinals that's not going to happen when i came here they said jim who i mean that was my father-in-law got me a license plate jim who you know and it was true i knew i was going to have to earn my way and you know and and make a mark obviously he was the perfect guy at the perfect time for an organization like pittsburgh you know he grew up in a home where his dad worked at a glass factory he was a hard-nosed worker believed in work ethic and jim lee and had those characteristics you know instilled him growing up you're in a steel worker city you're in a blue-collar city and here comes the bluest color you ever want to see in your life and he identified with all those people in pittsburgh and surrounding areas i reported my first spring chain with the pirates i reported down and we had a couple days of meetings and everything and i actually flew back to pittsburgh the night before my first day running a camp and stood on the street corner with the pirate parrot trying to sell tickets we used to go out and eat lunch and i remember this distinctly and the waitress would come over and say how you doing he said you want to go to the party game tonight and 9 out of 10 would go nah he said i got four tickets and he went not on your life so you just helped him hey we're fun we're going to be good but you know what it was all part of it was great i i enjoyed it you know it worked out great and that first year was like if we ran the ball out we got an ovation you know i mean you know and then all of a sudden you know things started to get better people started to pick up on it people started to get into it and it really started hopping in the early 90s it's often said that jim leland seems like he's come out of a different time but even if that's true he's always been able to relate to players of all eras a trait that can be attributed to leland's upbringing i come from a big family my dad was on a 16 he had 15 brothers and sisters so i had a lot of aunts and uncles watching all their different personalities and how they were i think it helped me in my managerial career the different personalities of players coming from all different walks of life it made me aware of what it takes to get the best out of that individual you have to have a relationship some type of relationship with each individual player i think to get the best out of he had like 25 different personalities for 25 different players he knew your talent and he knew each individual's talent he didn't care about his job he didn't care about anything else he cared about being a good manager with his players and he wanted his players to believe in him i always tell the story about how he cared about the guys on the bench as much as he carried about guys like bonds and benny and vance like yuri varsio was probably our 25th player jim loved him the pirates are playing a series at wrigley and so you played gary varsho in the middle game i guess of the series and you also knew that varsho's family was from wisconsin and they could get to wrigley in time for the game if i got this story right you do you do it was one of my great moments in managing to be honest with you i told varshall i said which game are your parents coming to he said well they're coming i might have been the middle game and i said well i'm playing you and marshall hit like two home runs there's a drive might be out of here it is on the first bet so after the game jim calls varshin he said all them cheeseheads that came today are they coming down again tomorrow to see you the varsity yeah they're all going to come back they're all going to go back he said well you tell them cheeseheads when they come back tomorrow if they want to see you it'll be in a lobby the hotel because you aren't playing tomorrow and you probably won't play until september but that's the way jim handled the 25th player when you had barry bonds leave all the other talk around the latter part of his career out of it how good was he naturally of all the players you've seen in your life well he was terrific i mean you could see this when he came up although i do believe this i think with all big league players there's a certain sense of insecurity when you first get there you know you're good and everything but all of a sudden you see these other big league players and i think there is a moment that flashes in your mind when you say am i really good enough and barry went through some tough times early on [Applause] overall it seems when he played for you and since then you've had a very good relationship with him but since the cameras were rolling people remember the incident in the early 90s you really chewed him out during spring training what led to that and how did the two of you resolve it mary was upset about his contract i think it might have been an arbitration situation and he wasn't really being cooperative in spring training and then coming off i heard is which appeared to be a little spat with bill verdin who was such a respected veteran baseball the quail and uh you know i snapped it was building throughout the drill the whole morning barry wasn't going to work at the intensity in which the coach wanted him to and consequently when he was challenged by the outfield coach bill verdin barry snapped back at him [Music] jim leon happened to be there and didn't appreciate it it didn't matter who you were you're going to do things right and i think from that day everybody knew who the captain of the ship was if there's anybody that doesn't have an ego it's jim leo but i do know one thing i am the damn manager and i'm gonna run this damn team and people aren't happy with that can go play somewhere else i can't help it hell i don't want to lose barry bond but i can't help what went on to me he was right you know and he knows that and i know that no player supposed to be on his coach like that and lena came over and did the right thing and i told him i said skip you don't ever have to apologize to me for that you're right the fact that he stood up to barry bonds jim leland gains respect everybody in the team and from barry bonds and the relationship grew closer and then barry became a better player [Applause] i ended up with the right guy from me it's hard to explain when you get that lucky as a young ball player to have such a a great manager to really have someone that believed in you that believed in as a player believing as a person never judged you and that was the type of person i needed leland was what the pirates needed too as his no-nonsense style quickly made him an icon in pittsburgh here comes the guy who's the manager of a blue collar team he ain't putting up with no crap and i think that sealed his legacy forever i'm gonna win this game i just know it we played nerf basketball around the world and we had tournaments baseline right humper dick's good he came out he loved it the players were going crazy okay you know it was kind of fun because you could really get on him at that time don't chance it i can't throw it in the ocean and it became you know our kind of team togetherness what's more important proportionately how you run a clubhouse how you relate to players or what you do strategically once the game begins i really think it's the people business i think it's learning each player individually i truly believe this i think the toughest job for a major league manager is to get his team prepared to play each and every single day get those guys to come out there and give their best you know their best today might not have been as good as yesterday it might be better than yesterday that's the toughest thing we basically had to show up and we had one thing to do and that was play hard and really our group of guys in pittsburgh were always ready to play the team took on jim leon's personality your dad one of the things he apparently instilled in you is you don't deserve anything you didn't earn oh no question about it and he was tough he was fair but he was tough i'll never forget 1988 i was named co-manager of the year with with tommy lasorda sporting news when i called my dad so proud to tell him he said oh that's just co-manager right i said yeah dad it's just co-manager but that's what drove me he always said if you can't afford to go to dance you don't go and you have to work for everything you get the pirates adopted leland's work ethic and they were transformed from seller dwellers to division champs winning the nl east three consecutive seasons but in the playoffs they couldn't seem to find their way to the world series we went for the first time in 90 the reds beat us the next year in 91 was probably our most talented team we get beat by the braves 92 i think our best team and not the most talented but our best team game seven of the national league championship series the pittsburgh pirates trying to become the first national league team to come from three games to one behind to win the nlcs we had doug drayback going for game seven in atlanta i knew we were gonna win you're up two-nothing going to the bottom of the ninth with doug draybeck on the mound but draybeck's thrown over 120 pitches how close did you come to taking him out at the start of the end he was the best i had and i felt he was still the best i had going into the ninth inning and that's why i stayed with him pendleton pulls it down the right field line hooking toward the corner it is a fair ball so pendleton gets a double just as hits a ground ball jose lean who had made six errors all year has it go through him then breen gets a walk and then you got to go get drebek and bring in stan belinda right right but belinda actually did a great job at second winning run at first dan hits one to left bonds on the track and the wall makes the catch pendleton underscore the first atlanta run of the ball game everybody exploding but for the most part you're no closer getting david justice home because he's still at second base we also felt we had barry hill struck out oh so close was the last pitch to berry hill randy marshall i worked a little bit with today was a home plate on fire i never say anything to him a lot about it but we felt like the game would have been over after hunger popped up [Music] two down to the bottom of the ninth as francisco cabrera comes to the plate to bat for the pitcher if cabrera hits the ball at jeff king it's history he didn't he hit it in the hole [Applause] and barry comes up and almost makes a perfect throw if it's a perfect throw supreme's idle but it happened to be a little bit up the first bass line and when the valley had to reach for it and try to tag him it was too late [Applause] it was a movie you couldn't make it look any better couldn't make it look any closer couldn't make it look any better see sid breen laying there at home play he had played for me frame just beat the tag of his ex-mate mike lavalier i can still see andy vance like sitting in shallow center field with his arms folded across his knees it was a crusher and there were more tears uh jim leno wasn't the only sentimental person that i can tell there's a lot of big boys with tears in their eyes at night not only was this game a tough one to lose but it's the third one in a row and there's a growing sense that maybe you can't hold the team together and the window is closed right we knew that yeah we knew before the playoffs what was going to happen this team that's what hurt us we knew we weren't going to see this man again [Music] [Applause] [Music] we lose game seven on the play at home played with sibrim slaying across it was the next day when i went to go pack up my bag we were in at three rivers stadium and jim lee was in his office all by himself and he's sitting at his desk basically staring at the floor and i went to say goodbye and he stands up and waves me over and he puts his arms around me and he just starts bawling and consequently i start crying because we both knew that that was the beginning of the end before the start of the 1993 season the pittsburgh pirates who had won three straight division titles and fallen just short of the world series saw some of their stars leave for free agency it was tough but as i said before that's that's all part of it i mean we're all big boys we knew that we weren't probably going to be able to sustain it with the contracts coming in and arbitration and free agency it was going to be a tough time for pittsburgh for a while leland managed the pirates for four more seasons never finishing above 500. after the 96 season with four years still remaining on his contract jim leland decided to leave pittsburgh you get some people and i said oh you left us you know you you were a traitor you left us and everything but i you know i i remember when some people were upset and got on me pretty good about i remember my wife katie telling me you know jim if they're so mad that you left they must have thought you're a good manager so i tried to look at the positive side of it he loved pittsburgh he didn't want to leave pittsburgh he felt he owed him a world series championship but he got to a point where he decided that that's it got to go someplace else where you have a chance to win leland's quest for world series brought him to south florida in 1997 to manage the marlins the team was just in its fifth year of existence but already had a roster rich in talent the marlins are headed in the right direction i'm no savior by any means i'm here just to help orchestrate this thing the presence of an individual can be the difference between first place and last place in my mind jim leland looks on as his marlins are crunching his former buck team what a great addition he's been he took that club that was ready to win he molded it and i think he was a difference maker for us leland led the marlins to the national league wild card and after knocking off the giants and then the favorite braves finally jim leland would manage in the world series [Music] in that world series the marlins faced the cleveland indians the teams traded victories through the first six games and that set the stage for an unforgettable game seven hi everyone and welcome to game seven i'm bob costas for the call of this final game of the 1997 world series i remember him saying to the team that we're not going to lose he said some choice words with it and we're not going to lose and it was almost like he was talking to you directly it resonated with me and i think it resonated with the rest of the team here's jarrett wright he's a couple years removed from high school he gets the ball for game seven but here's jim leland in the other dugout and he rode all those buses for all those years maybe dreaming about a game like this was that thought actually going through your mind no no question about it i mean you really kind of had to pinch yourself to realize you were there [Applause] there was 60 some thousand people there and the impact that this had on little kids and and dads and grandsons and i mean it's it's unbelievable when you think about it and to think that you're involved in that it's it's touching i mean it touches peace it's unbelievable to think that you're a small part of something that big i felt like it was a reward for me for spending all those years in the minor leagues i thought i felt i took it as a reward jim leland's wife katie and son patrick with front row seats for what could be the biggest night of 52 year old jim leyland's baseball life as that seventh game played out you fall behind two nothing bonilla hits a home run gets you back in the game late you're still down a run going to the bottom of the ninth this is one of the great games not just because it was close but because it was a chess match there were so many subplots in this game it would take an hour to recount them all no there's no question about it this was obviously one of the greatest games probably the greatest games i was involved in 34 seasons in professional baseball for this trailing 2-1 as his team comes up for its last licks in game seven in the bottom of the ninth it was rookie craig council who came through in the clutch [Music] then florida would load the bases in the bottom of the 11th leland's first world championship was 90 feet away it'll be up to davon white when the ego came up i'm thinking to myself this one you know one out bases loaded divo hit a sac five we're world champions you know and then he grounded out to second and so i'm looking back at my card and i'm looking ahead i said you know you're always trying to think ahead i said oh i'm in a bind here i had alex aries left on the bench i was the only player i had left only one game seven in world series history has gone longer than this i was panicking a little bit to be honest with you and a breaking ball is in there the first bits i see they had your strike and so now i'm starting to look again and the next pitch i look up when the world series is over [Applause] i was in the minor leagues 18 straight years never thinking i was ever going to get to the big league this was a long route for me but it's something that i treasured a world championship for jim lila a career minor leaguer until they came [Applause] [Music] we had a chance to share that moment it was so important for him it was so important for me and of course for everybody else that was involved he had a lot of coaches with us in florida they had been with him in pittsburgh the first thing we thought of was uh that said dream game like [Music] we're it's off our back we're validated because that was a to carry that around for five years and hey everybody's going hey how come you didn't win it was like oh jim family won his world championship after three decades of being in baseball could you have ever imagined this no no not really i guess every little boy imagine this might happen to him one time but believe me i thought it was a total fantasy for me [Music] we could feel his emotions all of us who probably played for him his win was our win you know that's how i felt like i mean him went into florida felt like i want him i've watched that replay a hundred times when he looked on the field enjoying his face i mean it's like get emotional man that's a beautiful guy i was so happy that they could never say that i wasn't on a team that didn't win the big one couldn't win the big one we won one we how many we and i've thought about that i'll be honest with you i'm not gonna lie i've thought about that and i'm happy that i don't have to live with that [Music] this is your room where you sit and watch ball games i do i do jim you could have kept hundreds of things over the course of a career you accumulate a lot what's in this room that means the most and why does it have its place well i think you know this sounds a little corny but these are my shoes from the 1997 world series that uh my wife katie had bronze for me and it's it's more of a personal thing other people aren't so interested in that but i thought it was a special gift from her here we are in the living room and there's only one baseball thing in this room and it has a place of honor yeah that's uh i'm not really sure if i'm supposed to have that but wayne heyzinga i think i want to say he got seven of those and he presented me with one of them it actually lights up and of course it's been our treasure because it's uh you know it represents my one world series championship i feel good [Applause] [Music] are you gonna keep the team i don't know we're gonna worry about that you win the world championship and the next year you're a 100 loss team because there was a fire sale that had to be deflating that was tough it was a tough year for me personally if you want to talk about your personal records it was very damaging after the season when they won the world series financially the team hadn't done that well they weren't drawing that well during the season and they just decided to tear the team up you know they traded everybody none of us were happy with the decision it was a situation we had a world championship team and our players were in the prime of their career there weren't players that were going to be free agents for years to come it's really what you dream about building by the start of the 1998 season the world champions had already traded away 10 players and in may of that year a massive deal involving the marlins superstar outfielder completed the fire sale dave dembrosky and jim leland called me in the office and then they told me we have a trade for you and mike piazza we think you should go gary and i said well i already got a championship i'm from florida i'm not going anywhere because i had a blanket no trade clause but mr leland you know man i care about deeply uh pulled me to the side and said gary listen to me and listen to me good it's going to get real bad i'm not even going to be here i'm out of here and i said jim if you look me in my eyes and say you're out of here then i'll leave he said you have my word he wasn't happy about it and as he expressed to me i think it was a different situation he said dave you're at a different point than me i've been doing this for a while i think at this age i can't see myself building again for an extended period he just kept saying i'm not going through this again he's i'm not going on a five-year plan i'm on a now plan so the best opportunity at that time after miami was go to colorado i can tell you this this team is dismantled i'm quitting most people don't remember the episode of your career in colorado because it's just a blip on the radar screen but it didn't work out what was the reason well i tried harder i really did and i did a terrible job and i let a lot of people down and you know what i had a bad year but the one thing that got me to understand that you know i can't do it here was i was a pitchers manager i was a five to three four to three three to two manager not in coarse the fields just killed him he couldn't manage like he wanted because it was a joke he'd manage the game like he would in pittsburgh or miami then some guy would break his bat need a three-run homer i remember him in a dugout one night he goes this ain't baseball rockies beat the dodgers 18 to 10. winning this one 16 to 11. so he never really cherished that time managing he just i remember right off the base it's just a different game it's 14 to 11 and you win but it's just a different win you just felt like you weren't the right guy for the job and you walked away from a substantial amount of money what was the reason i just felt like unless you're totally convinced that you're the guy for that job you know and i'm not trying to be heroic here it wasn't fair to take a paycheck shows the type of guy that he is because once he went there and he didn't really feel he was doing the best job that he possibly could state of mind state of play at that time that he left a lot of money on the table and just walked away with two years left on his contract jim leland stepped down as rocky's manager and returned home to pittsburgh not knowing if he'd ever manage again well he was in pittsburgh you know and i was managing there so we'd see each other i could tell he missed the game i thought he'd manage again i wasn't sure though but i thought if the right job came open that he might do it and after six years away from managing leland got a call from his old friend dave dombrowski who is now with the up and coming tigers jim leland was returning to the place his baseball career had started it took me a long time to get here i signed with the tigers in 1963. he's such a great manager and has such a pulse of the moves and then when you top it off of it being the tigers blue collar type mentality city him being from that organization he was a natural choice for us this is an important point about jim he was one of the most loyal guys i have ever met he was coming up through the tigers organization but then in june july of 79 they hired sparky anderson it was really obvious that jim had nowhere to go well in 1981 the winner jerry reiser asked bobby winkles as our third base coach to go into player development that left the job open so we called jim his hesitation was purely because he invested all that time with the tigers and he didn't want to let them down and he seriously considered staying as a triple-a manager because of his loyalty [Music] jim leland was back in a familiar place and in his first year at the helm in detroit he took the tigers to the world series where he'd face the man who'd given him his first job in the major leagues and the cardinals are in detroit playing game one of the 2006 world series [Music] how hard was it to manage against larussa in the 06 world series i think the interesting part about that we kind of even had a pack talking before the world series that we didn't want to make this about us this was about the players within 10 seconds we both agreed under no circumstances are we doing any interviews about our friendship anytime anybody asks i can say is this a game between the tigers and the cardinals let's let's stop that storyline right now we knew it was going to be a common thread for the media to say well as one of his former coaches here he is managing against you know his mentor and everything and we tried to really downplay that and fortunately it worked out good there really wasn't much of that that went on but we did talk that one of us was going to be brokenhearted it happened to be me the o2 pitch swing and a miss and the saint louis cardinals are the 2006 world series champions [Music] that team did not reflect how good we were and unfortunately it didn't reflect how good jim had managed that team that year i remember him coming in the clubhouse after the game and it was really quiet i mean everyone was at their lockers and they were struggling and he was like turn that music on turn the music up get your heads up and be proud of what you accomplished this year because we fell a little short there's nothing to hang your heads about and i think that just changed them it changed everything in the room like kind of put things in perspective you know and then a guy that had been there before and and been to the mountaintop and won the whole thing leland and the tigers made it to the world series again in 2012 but again came up short this time against the giants then during the 2013 season came a difficult decision he told me he was late august to early september that he wasn't going to come back because you know i kind of believed him but after a while he kept talking about i i knew he was he was serious that he was going to do it and i told him i said jimmy bear tell dave knowing him for so long it didn't shock me because i just felt there was just a little bit of difference maybe and you could just he was getting worn down a little bit more as the year progressed not the game on the field itself but the travels and that but i didn't expect that i was still very surprised when he told me before making his retirement plans public leland took one more run at a world series the tigers would face the red sox in the alcs you win game one at fenway and you seem to have game two in hand and you're gonna leave boston up two nothing and you've got verlander ready to pitch game three looks like you'll have a stranglehold on the series david ortiz comes up and you bring in joaquin benoit you had phil koch veteran left-hander ortiz didn't have good numbers against coke and coke is basically there to face a left-handed hitter in a situation like that why did you go with benoit i just felt like benoit was my best he was my closer he had the outstanding changeup but i felt like you know what he's the best i got ortiz who's never homered against benoit bases loaded two out this is a huge out i'm gonna go with my best and unfortunately he threw the right pitch he just didn't get it where he wanted to and of course big poppy hit the famous [Applause] [Music] owner and that was a killer don't get me wrong that was a killer but i really thought it was so significant to that series there's no question about that up two to nothing going home that was huge turn around in that series however i still felt like we're okay because you know what do you normally say when you go to boston or the yankees wherever you go let's get a swiss but let's get a slit we got the split we came home with verlander the game number two was a big swing game don't get me wrong but number three just added to the misery because that was a game that i felt we okay we come home one on one we got justin he ended up pitching a great game and of course napoli hit the solo home run and beat us from them [Music] the tigers wound up losing the series in six and with that came the official close to the illustrious major league managing career of jim leland nobody likes to manage the game more than he does nobody he lived for that and i think all the outside stuff was starting to get to him to where the travel being away from home i mean we've been away all our lives and you come to a point where you go i'm tired when it's time it's time and it's time it's been a thrill and from the bottom of my heart thank you for having me [Music] we had kangaroo court and i was a judge it was a stupid thing guys do it now they have kangaroo court you get fined for dumb stuff jim had just gotten married the players chipped in and they bought him a beautiful tv for him and katie so one day they says we we want to present jim with the tv so we're standing there and i think j bell he says okay judge i was a judge he goes we got one more one more order of business here before we leave he goes jim leland he's going to get fined 10 because he didn't tell the guys exactly what day he's getting married on and so we can't get him a gift now jim oh he stood up he thought we were serious he goes what do you mean what do you mean you can't find me and he turned around and the tv was behind him broke him up jim loved those players when i say loved him loved him but i don't think sometimes he knew how they left him back gary sheffield before game seven in 97 gary sheffield who at that point was a veteran player said to his teammates hey let's get this not just for us but for the guy who rode the buses all those years were you in the room when he said it no i wasn't but i knew it was said you know things like that are priceless they're not places to anybody else but you think back every bus strip you took and you think that somebody remembered that or thought about it it's specialty you know i mean i can't imagine gary sheffield star player superstar player really taking the time to think about that i mean that's pretty special [Music] you know there's not a coach or a manager that cares more for his players than jim leland and that's what brings the emotions because he know you're capable of doing certain things and he pushes you to a limit that sometimes you don't think you can go i was lucky he helped get me on the map in terms of the baseball world he's an amazing manager but amazing guy first and foremost he changed my career he means he means the world to me as far as my professional career grows i i think if jim leland hadn't been in pittsburgh obviously we wouldn't be talking right now i wouldn't have the career i had i can't tell you i mean i can't tell you how thankful i am that you know played 12 years in the big leagues and every day i look back in my career and say man i'm so thankful for those two years in detroit going to the world series and playing for jim leland how you doing bro if you asked any player and you lined them up however deep i think every player would have the same sentiment that man my i'm a better person because jim leland was was a big part of my life [Applause] [Music] [Applause] i'm just glad that we're still connected and that we'll be connected for the rest of our lives because it means a lot to me and i know it means a lot to him but you know it means way more to me than you know he still thinks of me the way that he does and cares about me the way that he does because there's no other manager on the planet and i played with great managers and i believe me i love playing for them too i'm not trying to separate my other managers to just get wheeling but i would i would have went through a brick wall for that man and still would today [Applause] well he's a hall of famer to me one of the most respected managers around you could ask any manager that's in the hall of fame that managed against them how they feel about them and they would say that i think it's a no-brainer and the sooner he gets in the better i remember telling don zimmer this one time i said don you know it's the difference if jim had been where i was and i was with him and he had the same wins he said no he's had more we started laughing says you know i agree with that that's how good he is given all you've done it's a given that you'll be in the hall of fame you'll join your buddy tony larussa and other contemporaries in the hall of fame you're a modest guy but have you allowed yourself to think about that if i said told you that i never thought about possibly being in the hall of fame i'd be lying sure i have whether that happens or not i will be able to live with my career to go from the double a catcher to manage over 3 000 games be on a team in one world series participated in two others [Music] it's been great

Channel: cacable7

Views: 32,680

Rating: 4.8724375 out of 5

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Id: ZTHGv-b1LdA

Length: 44min 47sec (2687 seconds)

Published: Sat May 29 2021