Jack Lessenberry has a column in the Metro Times that suggests with tongue only partially in cheek that a fan's sign of “Leyland for Governor” might have made more sense than most of this year's political ads.
Here’s why. The day after the pennant, there was a story in The Windsor Star (a vastly improved newspaper over the last year or so, by the way) in which manager Jim Leyland said: “I knew we had good players. We didn’t have a good team.”
That’s what he did: He made the Detroit Tigers a team, who worked together for a common goal. They all had egos and individual goals and things they wanted to accomplish. But they put the team first, because he led them to see that was for the good of everybody. Late this summer, for whatever reason, they started screwing up. But when the playoffs began, and it all really counted, suddenly they were a team again.
That’s exactly what we need as a state and a society.
Michigan — and Detroit — needs leaders who will tell us the truth about what shape we are really in, and make the majority of us want to get involved in working together to try to reinvent our economy. We need to invest in the future and make things better — for us, but more especially, for our children and those who will come later. That’s one of the oldest of all American traditions: wanting life to be better for our kids.
Read Vote Leyland for governor in The Metro Times.
While we're at it, here's a couple links for more about Jim Leyland:
- Jim Leyland in the Baseball Reference Bullpen
- Jim Leyland in the Baseball Library
- Jim Leyland at Wikipedia (it says something about our culture that his page is 5 times the length of former Michigan Governor William Milliken - can some Milliken scholar get over there and fix that??)
Also check out this ESPN article on Dave Dunbrowski's hiring of Leyland as manager:
That passion that Jim Leyland has had throughout his career is back within him to manage," Dombrowski said. "The decision to name one of the top managers in the game of baseball in recent time, to bring him back to this organization, is a very big day for our franchise."
Yeah, I think you were right about that, Dave. 
3 Comments
He's getting my vote!
He's getting mine too!
why did you let that second-rate reliever throw 12 straight balls in the oakland series?
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