There's some important tutoring going on along the Detroit sports landscape.
No, I'm not talking about Joey Harrington's sessions with yoda Mike Martz.
Ever since the Tigers moved into Comerica Park, with its vast outfield, the team has struggled to take advantage of playing 81 games there a year. Never have they secured the pitching staff or the fly-chasing thoroughbreds needed to make playing in CoPa a legitimate home-field advantage. And neither have they employed the type of big league hitters that are more apt to spray the ball into the gaps than try to pull it over the wall.
Shortly after Jim Leyland was named manager, I wrote in this space how thrilled I was that one of his first moves was to hire Andy Van Slyke to work with the outfielders. I still am. But it's probably more accurate to say that Van Slyke -- the former Gold Glove outfielder for the Cardinals and Pirates -- isn't so much an outfielders coach as he is a centerfielders coach. It's pretty evident that Leyland's charge to his former Pirates player is to get the most out of the two young men vying for the centerfielder job: Curtis Granderson and Nook Logan.
Logan is faster than a speeding bullet, and Granderson is no tortoise himself. But neither are refined; both are precious metals waiting to be cut, shined, and set firmly into the Tigers' lineup. And you can do a whole lot worse than Andy Van Slyke as a teacher.
Van Slyke played 13 seasons in the majors, and made just 43 errors in the outfield -- a tad more than three a year. He used the long legs on his 6'2" frame and the fast artificial turf in Pittsburgh and St. Louis to run down gappers and long drives over his head in straightaway center. And he did it with a sense of humor unrivaled in the business.
"I have an Alka-Seltzer bat. You know, 'Plop, plop, fizz, fizz'," Van Slyke once said about a 1989 slump. "When the pitchers see me walking up there they say, 'Oh, what a relief it is.'"
When asked to discuss the '87 Pirates' penchant for shuffling players on and off the roster, Van Slyke said, "We had so many people coming in and out they didn't bother to sew their names on the backs of the uniforms. They just put them there with Velcro."
On his attempts to play third base early in his career: "They wanted me to play third base like Brooks [Robinson]. So I did play like Brooks -- Mel Brooks."
A more cynical person -- or a realist -- might say that having a sharp sense of humor is a wonderful qualification for being a Tigers coach. Around here, when it comes to baseball, laughing is what you do to keep from crying.
But seriously, folks -- I have a hunch that Van Slyke's arrival is just what the Tigers and their neophyte centerfielders need. So much of good outfield play is based on three things: anticipation, catch-and-throw technique, and baseball smarts. In centerfield, anticipation can add that split second off the break for the ball that can literally mean the difference between a catch or a hit. It's hard to teach instinct, but at least Van Slyke can educate Granderson and Logan about footwork and the best way to turn your body and other nuances that add up to premier centerfield play. As far as catch-and-throw technique and baseball smarts, Van Slyke can help there, too -- but the Tigers have Al Kaline in camp, so AVS shouldn't have to worry too much about those areas, because few were better at them than Kaline.
It's funny how certain positions for certain teams are either blessed with one good player after another, or are forever that gaping hole. The Mets, for example, couldn't pick a decent third baseman to save their souls. The Yankees always had good catchers. Turning to football, even our Lions have been pretty good in one area: kick returning.
The Tigers haven't, truthfully, had an All-Star-caliber centerfielder since Chet Lemon. Milt Cuyler and Brian Hunter were okay, but both of them lacked just enough to make you a smidge concerned whenever the ball was hit their way. Most of the others who have given it a shot are forgetful.
It's not enough, of course, to simply be fast, or to be determined. Young outfielders need someone to give them the savvy tips and the lowdown about what happens once the crack of the bat is heard and the ball heads in their general direction. And if the instructor has a nifty sense of humor along the way, maybe that's a nice little adjunct teaching tool.
Andy Van Slyke has the goods to make the Tigers' centerfielders something worth talking about. No joke.
(author's note: Van Slyke quotes taken from the book, "Baseball's Greatest Quotations" [Harper Perennial Publishing], by Paul Dickson)
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