By Chad Osborne
We’ll never know what Jim Leyland said… or did.
The newspaper article from August 18, 1971 simply reads, “Not only did the Tigers lose the game, but they also lost their skipper, Jim Leyland in the sixth.”
Leyland’s Bristol Tigers walked onto the Marion Stadium grass on a Tuesday night still stinging from a humbling defeat the night before. Not only did the Tigers drop a 5-1 decision to the hometown Mets on Monday, but they managed only three hits. Plus, they stuck out 20 times.
So, for good reason, the Bristol batters likely had ill intentions toward baseballs hurled their way by Marion pitchers in the second game of a two-game series in Marion.
Their combative approach worked.
Bristol jumped out to a quick 3-0 lead in the first-inning. Ray Gimenez put the Tigers on the board first with a two-run home run, and Mike Egleston followed with a solo shot.
The Tiger lead, however, vanished faster than one of Leyland’s Marlboro cigarettes. Marion’s Isaac Small belted a three-run homer in the third to knot the score at 3-3, and the Mets added three more runs in the bottom of the fifth for a 6-3 advantage.
An inning later, the Bristol boss was gone from the game.
We don’t learn the reason from reading the Bristol Herald Courier’s vague account. We just know “the Tigers lost their skipper.”
I hate to speculate, but now with decades of evidence of his managerial style, we can safely assume that the fiery, chain-smoking manager likely said something to the umpire to get himself tossed from the game, particularly after the Marion Mets dominated his Tigers during the short series.
When Detroit Tigers farm minor league director Dave Miller hired the 26-year-old Leyland in 1971 to lead the Bristol squad, he said the Ohio native was “aggressive and a real battler.”
That’s the skipper we saw in the majors from his early years managing the Pittsburgh Pirates – remember his heated conversation with Barry Bonds? – until the time he retired following the 2013 season with the Detroit Tigers. Leyland is famous for his dustups with umpires – including one at Yankee Stadium in which he paused shouting at an ump long enough for the singing of “God Bless America” during the seventh inning stretch. Once the song was finished, Leyland resumed his tirade. He had already been ejected for arguing balls and strikes.
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