There we were to be introduced to the Tigers’ new general manager – the man who might do for them what Jimmy Devellano did for the Red Wings. The baseball owner had struck gold with the hiring of rink rat Jimmy D. from the thrice-Stanley Cupped New York Islanders – his first hire after buying the hockey club in the summer of 1982. Now, in his third year of baseball ownership, Michael Ilitch was finally going to put the right man in charge of the front office, after some brutal work by several predecessors.
Pizza was Ilitch's game, but baseball (and hockey) wouldn't come as easily
On our seats were photocopies of a press release, ruining the surprise of the identity of the man behind the curtain.
32-year-old Randy Smith, tanned and looking very un-Detroit but very California, stepped into view after a brief introduction as we read of his accomplishments, thanks to the rhetoric distributed by the front office lackeys.
The new general manager, his equally-tanned and also very-California young wife at his side, spoke of the challenges that lie ahead.
Smith was a baseball brat, the son of longtime major league executive Tal Smith. Too untalented to play the game, all Randy wanted to do was run a big league team someday, just like his dad.
He got his chance, becoming the youngest GM in baseball history with the San Diego Padres. Hence the tan in November.
One of Smith’s first tasks as Tigers GM was to hire a manager to replace Sparky Anderson, shoved into retirement by the Ilitch family after 17 years in Detroit.
Did it matter, it was asked, if the new manager had big league experience?
The questioner was me, asking it when the more crotchety writers ran out of tangible things to say, which didn’t take long.
Smith looked at me thru the bright TV lights, fiddling with some notes in front of him.
“I think,” he began, “that that would be a priority ... more than likely, yes.”
He didn’t sound too sure of himself.
Smith ended up hiring Buddy Bell, and the Tigers promptly lost 109 games in 1996, with some of the worst pitching in big league history. Bell had no previous big league managing experience. Must not have been much of a priority, after all.
Jimmy Devellano had some growing pains as Red Wings general manager. He rolled into town with his typically ill-fitting necktie and squeaky Canadian voice, proudly proclaiming that “As long as Jimmy Devellano is general manager of the Detroy-et Red Wings, we will NOT trade a draft choice.”
Jimmy D. made good on his word, but his attempts to bring the moribund Red Wings back from the dead with the signing of aging veterans and untested college free agents failed miserably. In his fourth season, the Red Wings won 17 games and gave up over 400 goals – an average of over five per game.
But Devellano got it right eventually, hiring Jacques Demers as coach and watching his first-ever draft choice blossom into team captain by age 21. The draft choice was a center named Steve Yzerman.
Randy Smith wasn’t the Tigers’ Jimmy Devellano after all. Not even close. One week into his seventh season in Detroit, Smith was fired by new president Dave Dombrowski, who assumed the GM duties. Smith, to this day, hasn’t come close to another big league executive position.
By the time Smith was canned, Ilitch was roundly viewed by the denizens around town as a hockey-first owner who didn’t put the time or the money into the Tigers. More dough – literally and figuratively, was going into Ilitch’s pizza empire and his hockey team than was making its way to Comerica Park.
After the Tigers lost a mind-boggling 119 games in 2003, Ilitch’s reputation as an incompetent when it came to baseball ownership was at its zenith. The Red Wings had won three Stanley Cups under his watch, yet the Tigers were a national embarrassment. How could this be? How could he get it so right in one sport, and so horribly wrong in another?
It wasn’t known at the time, but Ilitch had gotten it very right, indeed, with the baseball team when he hired Dombrowski from the Florida Marlins in 2001.
Last week, the Tigers pulled off an earth-shattering trade with those Marlins, acquiring multiple All-Stars Miguel Cabrera (3B) and Dontrelle Willis (LHP) for six prospects. The deal added about $20 million to the Tigers’ payroll, which could reach $130+ million in 2008. Two seasons ago the Tigers made the World Series with a team that’s perhaps 60-70% as strong as the one they will field next summer.
Funny, but nobody calls Mike Ilitch a hockey-only owner anymore.
Nobody wonders why he won’t spend in baseball. Nobody complains about his bad hires in the front office. Nobody questions his judgment in the game that he loves and played at the minor league level. Nobody wonders why he just won’t sell the team and cut his losses.
They used to wonder all those things, and not all that long ago.
Dombrowski, who turned out to be Ilitch's baseball Devellano
It took Ilitch about nine years to mature as a top-flight baseball owner, a little longer than the half-dozen years it took him to figure out what he was doing in the NHL. Yet the first Stanley Cup didn’t arrive until the 15th season of his ownership. He just completed his 15th full season with the Tigers.
Because of the trade this week with Florida, which follows trades for Jacque Jones and Edgar Renteria earlier this off-season, many feel the Tigers are the team to beat in ’08. Not just in their division. Not just in their league. But in all of baseball.
And Ilitch is now considered a premier owner – one who’ll do whatever it takes to win the whole enchilada.
The man was 70 years old when he found Dave Dombrowski and gave him control. Not too old to finally outgrow baseball puberty.
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