When managing Bristol, Leyland regularly smoked Marion’s Mets
Plus: Leyland, a chocolate malt and a near brawl in a hotel parking lot
Marion Mets Newsletter – Issue 20
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.
It was one of the 73 times Leyland was thrown out of a ballgame during his 22 years managing big leagues clubs. (Believe it or not, that’s only the 10th most in major league history).
He also won a lot of games, including a World Series title in 1997 as skipper of the Florida Marlins, and three manager of the year awards, two with Pittsburgh and one in Detroit. He is well-respected throughout baseball, which is another reason Leyland, on Sunday, Dec. 3, 2023, was voted into the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown by the 16-member Contemporary Baseball Era Committee. He will be inducted on July 21, 2024.
Leyland won 1,769 games as the manager of four major league teams, Pittsburgh, Florida, the Colorado Rockies and Detroit Tigers. In Bristol, his ’71 Tigers finished with a 31-35 record, good enough for third place in the Appalachian League’s South Division, one game behind the 33-35 Marion Mets.
Despite finishing behind Marion in the standings, Leyland’s Tigers got the upper hand on the Mets, winning seven of the 10 head-to-head battles. Leyland first managed at Marion Stadium on July 4, 1971. The Tigers swept a holiday doubleheader with 2-1 and 5-1 wins. Two weeks later, Leyland’s Tigers swept another double dip from the Mets in Bristol, 3-1 and 3-2.
Leyland, the Bristol Herald Courier reported, “rattled a few lockers,” before the game, “and his Bristol Tigers came out snarling.”
More on Leyland
Jeff Natchez played outfield and first base for the Leyland-led Bristol Tigers in 1971, and had plenty of wonderful stories to share about his former minor league manager when we spoke on the phone in February, 2023. One of those tales involved Leyland yelling at a Bluefield player who attempted to bunt for a base hit when his team had a comfortable lead late in a game. “I don’t know if he really was going after him, but knowing him, he was ready to rock and roll,” Natchez said.
Another story involved a chocolate malt and a near brawl in a hotel parking lot.
I’ll let Jeff tell the story:
“One night, we were in Covington [Virginia]. You know those towns closed up at 8 or 9 o’clock at night, and the game didn’t get over until 10 or 11. He’s [Leyland] got a bunch of 18-year-olds, and we’re hungry. He took us to some truck stop. That was the only place open, and you could get a big ol’ chocolate malt for like 85 cents. It was in one of those super-gulp-like big containers.
We’ll, Gary Christenson, my buddy, he drank about three-quarters of his, and then for some reason, he threw it out the window of the bus when we were driving back to the hotel. It splattered on the windshield of a car going the other direction.
It was some young guys – like early 20s – [in the passing car] and they followed the bus back to the hotel. So, they were waiting for us to get off the bus, and Leyland looked out like ‘what the hell is going on with this car?’
We knew. We saw the car following us.
We got all of our big guys. Gene Pentz, he was one of our pitchers; he made it to the big leagues. He turned down a scholarship to Penn State to be a linebacker. So, he was a big boy. And we had Mike Egleston, He was about 6-4, 230 [pounds].
We got all of the big guys up at the front to get off the bus first.
But Leyland was pissed. He said ‘You guys are going to come up with the money for these guys to get their car washed.’
We found all the change we could get. Leyland had then gone up to his room, but we were supposed to get the money to these guys. We got all the change together, and when they came to get it, whoever was handing it to them just dropped all of these coins all over the sidewalk.
It’s amazing a fight didn’t break out right then. But nobody threw a first punch, so it didn’t happen.”
Just for fun…
I dug out my 1990s-era Bristol Tigers cap to sit on the desk while I wrote about Jim Leyland.
That’s all for now. If you have a story to share about the Marion Mets, I’d love to talk with you. You can reach me at chadoz97@gmail.com. Also, if you see something I missed or simply got wrong, send me a note.
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