Leyland Tries To Impart Feeling Of Urgency Onto His Players

Jim Leyland always speaks with a sense of urgency when it comes to managing the Tigers, and I like that.

Part of it is his age -- let's face it. You'd be urgent, too, if you were looking in the rearview mirror at age 60 and it was getting smaller and smaller. He wants to win now -- or soon -- because he ain't getting any younger.

But part of it is the urgency to rid the Tigers of the stench that has wafted over the franchise since the Bush administration -- the FIRST George Bush. George W's dad was still president when Michael Ilitch bought the Tigers in the summer of 1992. And other than a barely-over-.500 record in 1993, the L's have always outnumbered the W's. Many times, they've not only outnumbered them -- they've dwarfed them.

It's been a few weeks in Florida now for Mr. Leyland as Tigers skipper, and even though he went to Lakeland speaking with -- ah! -- urgency, he's ratcheted it up a notch.

According to the Detroit News, Leyland had a pow-wow with his club Sunday morning. His motivation, he says, is that, "I smell stuff."

The stench is still not gone.

"Lakeland's for development, Detroit's for progress and production," Leyland said, summing up his Sunday talk to his team.

It wasn't said, not specifically, and his name wasn't mentioned, but there is a consensus growing that one of the players Leyland is referring to when it comes to his "produce or go elsewhere" decree is first baseman Carlos Pena.

Lynn Henning, in today's News, says that Leyland openly wonders if years of losing have surreptitiously set lower standards, and that players have rarely been taken to task if those artificially low standards are not met.

"There's a lot of talent here," Leyland says, "but we've got a lot of work to do."

Pena is, indeed, probably one of the players who has a big fat target on his back. He has produced in maddeningly brief intervals, and always it comes with a side order of hope and is washed down with a bitter drink of potential.

Leyland is making it clear to his ballclub that such "now you see it, now you don't" performances are not to be accepted -- at least not in Detroit.

There's the pot, Leyland is telling his players, so go pee in it. Or not.

Still up north, this January, the Tigers' winter caravan about to hit the road, Leyland said he knows he has a very short window of chance here.

"We have to get this done, and get it done relatively quickly," he said at the time. "The fans don't want to wait. Mr. Ilitch doesn't want to wait. And I don't want to wait."

The good news is the Tigers' camp is finally -- FINALLY -- occupied with genuinely talented young ballplayers. Special consultant Al Kaline told the papers Saturday that for the first time in his recent memory, other teams are calling the Tigers, inquiring about their youngsters.

"We haven't had that," Kaline said, and rarely have four words been more true.

Leyland is impressed with the Tigers' talent -- up and down the roster, and throughout the minor league system. He looks around him and sees great young arms, skilled position players that are, in some cases, still in their teens, and he marvels.

The youth movement the Tigers have afoot is in full swing, and it is by all accounts the real deal.

Yes, youth is great. But you know what they say: It's wasted on the young.

Jim Leyland wants his team to feel the heat, because he's feeling it. After only three weeks of spring training.

"This is a big boy's game," he says.