Long-Time Manager Jim Leyland Earns Election To Baseball Hall of Fame
NASHVILLE — Longtime manager Jim Leyland was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday in a nostalgic start to MLB’s winter meetings.
Leyland is a legend of his craft, a firebrand with a propensity for tirades and one of the winningest managers of the past 50 years not already in the Hall of Fame. And what underscored his integrity, was when he signed a multi-year deal with the Colorado Rockies. Leyland stepped down after the first year, admitting that the impact of Denver’s Mile High altitude was a challenge he never anticipated. He gave back the remaining salary on his mutli-year deal.
Leyland was elected by a 16-member panel of industry staples known as the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee for Managers, Executives and Umpires, which meets every three years.
Lou Piniella, who fell short by one vote again this year, is the 17th-winningest manager in MLB history with 1,835 wins for five teams and one World Series title. Leyland ranks 18th with 1,769 wins for four teams and a World Series title of his own. Of the 16 managers with more wins, 12 are in the Hall of Fame — and three (Dusty Baker, Bruce Bochy and Terry Francona) are not yet eligible.
Each panelist was allowed to vote for three candidates who made most of their contributions to baseball after 1980. Beyond Piniella, former Washington Nationals manager Davey Johnson, 1983 Baltimore Orioles architect Hank Peters, ex-manager Cito Gaston, former executive Bill White and ex-umpires Ed Montague and Joe West were also under consideration.
The Hall of Fame formed these committees to give consideration to players no longer eligible for election on the baseball writers’ ballots and to managers, executives and umpires whose résumés warrant Cooperstown consideration. This year’s committee included Hall of Famers Jeff Bagwell, Tom Glavine, Chipper Jones, Ted Simmons, Jim Thome, Joe Torre and Bud Selig; former and current executives Sandy Alderson, Bill DeWitt, Michael Hill, Ken Kendrick, Andy MacPhail and Phyllis Merhige; and media members Sean Forman, Jack O’Connell and Jesus Ortiz.
Leyland received 15 of 16 votes. The 78-year-old’s major league managerial career began with Pittsburgh in 1986 after he spent four seasons as third base coach for another Hall of Fame manager, Tony La Russa, with the Chicago White Sox.
He managed the Pirates for 11 seasons that included the early years of Barry Bonds’s career and ended with a last-place finish in 1996. He left for the still-nascent Florida Marlins in 1997 and led them to a World Series title in his first season. He spent two seasons in Miami and one with Colorado before finding another long-term home with the team that signed him as a player, the Detroit Tigers. He managed Detroit from 2006 to 2013 and made two World Series appearances, losing to the St. Louis Cardinals in 2006 and the San Francisco Giants in 2012.
Piniella missed election by one vote for the second straight time. He spent 18 seasons as a player before transferring to the dugout. Those 18 seasons, which spanned four teams and included 11 years with the New York Yankees, were impressive, if not Cooperstown-worthy. He finished with a .291 batting average and more than 1,700 hits. He was the 1969 American League rookie of the year with Kansas City and made one all-star appearance, in 1972 with the Royals.
His managerial career started the same year as Leyland’s, 1986, when he led the Yankees under George Steinbrenner. He managed them for two years, moved to general manager, then slid back into their dugout after one of Billy Martin’s firings in 1988. After three years in Cincinnati that included a World Series title in 1990, Piniella landed in Seattle, where he led stars Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martinez and Alex Rodriguez through one of the most memorable eras in Mariners history. Later, he led the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for three years and the Chicago Cubs for three; he retired in 2010.
West, who umpired more MLB games than anyone else (5,460), and Johnson each received fewer than five votes.