Tigers Win The Pennant!

Tennis news is minimal today, but as a lifelong fan of the Detroit Tigers it wouldn't really matter what was going on elsewhere in sports. It has been 19 years, most of them filled with losing and more losing, since their last appearance in the postseason, and now, just three years after they lost an American League record 119 games, they've reached the World Series. It's unimaginable, really.

There's lots of accolades to hand out for such a turnaround, but manager Jim Leyland, in his first year, is getting most of the credit. Mitch Albom, the peerless Detroit sports columnist, looks at Leyland's impact in this column, written before the ACLS series with Oakland. Here's one of Leyland's best quotes:

"It wasn't really until the winter caravan that I could look them in the eye and pretty much tell you the ones who believed in themselves and the ones who doubted themselves ..." he recalled. "When we got to spring training, I had a pretty good idea of who was tentative and who was aggressive and ... who we had to have a change in the mind-set for. Not that I'm that smart, but when you've been around players as much as I've been around them, you get a pretty good idea."

I think that good coaches, whether baseball, basketball or tennis, have that same knack. It is, in a nutshell, leadership.

TAGS: baseball, Jim Leyland, Detroit Tigers, Mitch Albom