A few days ago, Detroit Tigers manager Ron Gardenhire announced he was retiring due to health issues. I'll have to admit, although I have been following baseball a little more in the past year or two, that I was not a really big Gardenhire fan. Not because of the guy himself, I just would've liked a bigger name person to manage the Tigers. I wasn't really even convinced to stop sleeping when the Tigers hired Brad Ausmus before Gardy. I thought Alan Trammell was a great hire (and should get a good amount of the credit for Jim Leyland's '06 AL Champion team). I was a huge fan of Leyland. I guess I figured the Tigers would hire somebody with good playoff pedigree like Buck Showalter or perhaps somehow lure Mike Hargrove out of retirement. Ausmus had potential to me, but wasn't given much time, and was forced to see the Tigers start to rebuild during his tenure, so I think he deserves more credit that he was given. Gardenhire, to me, seemed like he was kind of finished with baseball after leaving the Twins. He was a coach for a little bit, but I had figured his managing days were over, and kind of like Grady Little or Lou Piniella would just disappear from the sport entirely. Then the Tigers go and hire him, and you could tell it was kind of like 'let's get a well-known name, and hire him for a few years while we get prospects'. I am kind of excited to get another manager, but before I get to some names I would be ok with being the next Tigers manager, I'm going to throw some Tigers sunset manager cards your way.
Gardenhire was the last Tigers manager. I believe with his health, this will be it for Gardy. He probably won't appear in the 2021 Topps set, so I'll go ahead and use this custom as his sunset card.
Before Gardenhire, the last Tiger manager to go off into the sunset was Jim Leyland. He should've won a title or two with Detroit, and I will always despise the Cardinals and Giants.
There were some years of turmoil between Jim Leyland's first year and the 1995 season, and nobody really worth noting who was a manager, although one or two actually did earn sunset cards during those years. 1995 was Sparky Anderson's last season. He led the Tigers to their last World Championship in 1984.
Sparky Anderson took over in 1979, and between 1971 and then were a few managers, most noteably, Billy Martin.
The final sunset card I have for you today is a 1971 Topps sunset card of Mayo Smith, the guy who led the Tigers to the 1968 World Championship.
The Tigers have had a run of some really good managers who have finished out their career with the team, and I hope that they can maybe do that with the next one (as well as a few World Championships!)
Among some of the names I would like to see managing Detroit in the future: Buck Showalter, Joe Espada, Mike Hargrove, Alan Trammell, Kirk Gibson, Will Venable, and Hensley Meulens.
I don't really favor guys with no experience unless they have a great reputation or long stints coaching (Espada and Meulens with the coaching experience, and Venable with the reputation). Among some of the guys listed as candidates are AJ Hinch, Venable, George Lombard, Vance Wilson, Don Kelly, Pedro Grifol, Mike Redmond, and Lloyd McClendon. I would be ok with Hinch, but that is just asking for drama. I guess I could learn to approve of Wilson and Kelly since they are former Tigers with intelligent reputations. Lombard is still getting into coaching/managing, I don't know much about Grifol, and Redmond (Florida), and McClendon (Pittsburgh and Seattle) have had chances to manage, but didn't do anything but lose. If they really want an internal candidate, I would be intrigued with Omar Vizquel, and Ramon Santiago are interesting, but the lack of experience would worry me. Dave Clark and Mike Rabelo have been names that were thrown around too, as well as Phil Nevin. If I could choose anyone right now, regardless of them being with another team or not, I would love to have Dave Roberts, Dave Martinez, or Joe Maddon. I've always thought Martinez would do great, and he finally showed he could in Washington. Maddon has been amazing with Tampa and Chicago, and Dave Roberts is just on the verge of a title in LA. Gabe Kapler seems like he has potential too, and he is a former Tiger. I guess we'll see. Now that I've named about 40 guys, I've probably named their next manager. Things could shape up to be good in the next few seasons with a lineup of Spencer Torkleson, Christin Stewart, maybe a part-time Miguel Cabrera, Jeimer Candelario, Niko Goodrum, Riley Greene, Parker Meadows, Isaac Pardes, and others, plus they will have a rotation of Casey Mize, Tarik Skubal, Matt Manning, Joey Wentz, Alex Faedo,and others. If they can entice some top tier free-agents to sign, the 2020's could look good for Detroit, and I'm looking forward to my son learing about baseball just as the Tigers get good and the Rays hopefully stay good.
Things got a little messed up with the vacation in the past few days. My wife is going to finally have some surgery on her veins to hopefully unclog some areas and we are hoping it may reduce some of the high pressure in her head. Perhaps between a successful surgery and programming her shunt to drain more cerebral spinal fluid, she can get some relief from these horrible headaches. I'm hopeful. Her surgery is in the middle of next month, so instead of taking a week and a half vacation, I'm going to take a few days off for her surgery and the day or two after, and we'll probably take a 3-day weekend at some point and just drive somewhere that the leaves will change at, while my mother-in-law will have our son. Not the ultimate vacation, but I will still get away from work, and get some much needed time alone with my (hopefully healed from surgery) better half.
Thanks to everyone who commented on my last post and offered to send me cards to complete my Devil Rays Topps run. I hope to do more trading in the future. Just gotta get my hands on some cards out in the wild.
Thanks for checking out my latest post.
-Jeremy
No comments:
Post a Comment