"Turning The Page" Key To Learning How To Win, Van Slyke Says

Bob Seger would be so proud of Andy Van Slyke.

"This team has to learn to turn the page after a loss," AVS told me before yesterday's 4-3 Tigers loss to the White Sox.

Ahh, turn the page. Cue Alto Reed's saxophone.

Van Slyke, the Tigers' outfielders/first base coach, is part of a staff, led by Manager Jim Leyland, that's trying to instill a winning attitude into a team that knows as much about winning baseball as the Lions do about winning football. Van Slyke, Lloyd McClendon, Don Slaught, and Gene Lamont either played or coached during the salad days of Pittsburgh Pirates baseball, circa the early-1990's.

"This ballclub [the Tigers] is starting to get a taste of what it means to win," Van Slyke told me in the coaches' cubbie yesterday morning. It was part of May's interview for Motor City Sports Magazine. "And I think they're getting the idea that winning feels a lot better than losing. There's a time when you have to turn the page with the acceptance of losing ballgames, and I think this ballclub is at that point."

The Tigers, after a 5-0 start, have had to turn the page three times in a row now after yesterday's loss, but players like Brandon Inge talk about having a "different agenda" in 2006 -- one that says, with confidence, "Let's go get 'em tomorrow."

Before, it may have been mostly talk. But the prevailing feeling is that thanks to leaders like Leyland and his staff, there is real internal believability among the players that they have a genuine chance to win everytime they take the field.

I believe this is an important homestand for the Tigers -- six against the White Sox and the Cleveland Indians -- because not only does the team not want to cancel out their 5-1 opening road trip, but those two teams are the white whales in the Central Division that must be slayed if the Tigers are serious about being considered anything more than also-rans.

They're 0-2 thus far, and while they haven't been blown out, they're already dropping close games -- games that the champion White Sox made a monotonous habit of winning in 2005.

The starting pitchers aren't walking people -- "Gotta throw strikes," Leyland said before yesterday's game -- but they're giving up homeruns that, in the two losses to the Chisox, were the difference makers. And the offense still seems to be relying on their own longball abilities too much when it comes to scoring runs. But 5-3 is still 5-3. Let's just hope it doesn't turn into 6-8 before long.

"I think number one is, you have to believe you have enough talent to win, and I think we have enough talent here to have a winning record," AVS told me. "Now, how that shakes out in the long haul, I don't know. I don't think anyone knows."

I guess we'll find out 154 games from now.