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Pudge Supporter
Join Date: May 2006
Location: Detroit
Posts: 575
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Leyland: Victory is 'A' OK// tigers win 10-4
Quote:
OAKLAND, Calif. -- Somewhere among Wednesday's mix of Tigers tricks -- bats that again boomed, pitching good enough to get the job done, players who played with passion -- Tigers manager Jim Leyland saw more than a 10-4 victory over Oakland at McAfee Coliseum.
"We've got a lot of nice things on this team going for us," Leyland said after the Tigers had bashed Athletics pitchers for 13 hits, including home runs by Craig Monroe and Brandon Inge, to stop a two-game slide and win the series finale.
"People don't realize what a tough grind this is," Leyland said of a long season that, in Detroit's case, sent it in the past two weeks against St. Louis, Houston and a good-hitting Pirates team, all ahead of a long flight and a tough, physical adjustment to the West Coast.
Wednesday's victory, Leyland said, "shows me a lot." It came on a day when starter Kenny Rogers moved to 11-3 on the season, even if by Leyland's admission, Rogers "was not at his best." It also featured an offensive breakout after two tough losses against a strong A's pitching staff.
Heavily involved was Tigers catcher Pudge Rodriguez (.306 batting average) who had three hits, including two doubles. Curtis Granderson, Carlos Guillen (back to .300) and Monroe also had two hits apiece, Monroe adding a double to his deep home run into a staircase beyond the left-field wall, a good 420 feet away.
It is why Leyland sat in his office afterward, taking stock of his first-place team, and said:
"I don't want this to be misinterpreted, but I know this team can be a special team. Maybe it's because I've managed long enough to know. But you've got to want it, to want to grind it out. And I'm not going to let 'em up. They may hate me, but I wanna make sure they know there's something going on here."
Lest anyone misunderstand, Leyland said: "I'll tell you, I love this bunch of guys."
It is no longer chemistry binding the Tigers. It is more the deeper bond that tends to evolve when players and a manager who get along experience the sheer bliss of success.
"All I see is a hell of a bunch of guys here," Leyland said to an Oakland reporter's reminder that life was not so rosy at Comerica Park a year ago. "I haven't seen any of that.
"But I'm gonna keep reminding them that I'm not gonna put up with anything less than their best. I'm not gonna let 'em slack off just because we got a few runs."
That could have been the case Wednesday as the Tigers went ahead 7-0 after four innings against A's starter Kirk Saarloos.
The A's, though, got eight hits in 5 2/3 innings of so-so work by Rogers, and could have made it a tighter ballgame in the fifth.
After Bobby Crosby hit a one-out double and Frank Thomas was hit by a pitch, Jay Payton ripped a liner up the middle that Placido Polanco gloved and turned into a double play -- all because Polanco was perfectly positioned, shaded more toward the bag, against Payton, a right-handed hitter, who had beaten the Tigers in the series' first two games.
Leyland praised Polanco as one of the unsung, everyday professionals who make these Tigers click. It was Polanco's play, Leyland said, that was "the play of the game." .
He paid similar tribute to Roman Colon, who took over for Rogers and cleaned up the A's, earning his first big league save.
"Look at Colon today -- nobody knows how tough that game was," Leyland said. "We were in trouble."
The manager repeated that he sees an opportunity now he never imagined when he took the Tigers job last October.
"They've got a chance to accomplish something," he said, speaking clearly of a chance to make the postseason. "Will we? I don't know. But they've got a chance to make this a memorable season."
More memories were made Wednesday during a ballgame that, in earlier years, when so much about the Tigers ran in reverse, might have had a different outcome.
That it didn't Wednesday made the manager more than a little whimsical.
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Link::: http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll...607060372/1129
was a good game.. glad to see them win it! 
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Leyland: Victory is 'A' OK// tigers win 10-4
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