The Tigers’ Manager Always Seems to Sparkle, Even Early in the Day

George Lee Anderson worked very hard at becoming Sparky. Now, it’s practically second nature for the popular manager of the Detroit Tigers.

Anderson’s day during spring training begins in high gear before the sun comes up and he doesn’t switch it off until he tumbles back into bed around midnight.

At 6:15 a.m., Anderson, Tigers President Jim Campbell and Alice Sloane, the club’s executive secretary, begin a 40-minute walk along Lake Parker from the Holiday Inn.

Campbell and Anderson are more than boss and employer. They’re good friends and enjoy one another’s company. They both like to needle.

“Sparky and Alice have a new thing, now,” Campbell is saying. “They’re each vying for brownie points with (team owner) Tom Monaghan.”

“I’m way ahead now,” Anderson responds quickly.

Actually, Anderson has been light years ahead of most of the pack for a long time. His glittering managerial record speaks for itself. He is the only manager to win the World Series in both leagues.

“There are a lot of guys who can manager between the foul lines,” Campbell says. “Sparky also happens to be very good with players, fans and with the media.

“In modern baseball, that’s all important, too.”

Anderson wants a private life like anybody else, but he believes he can have that during the offseason. As a result, the Sparky persona operates nonstop from spring training through the end of October.

“In those eight months when I draw my pay, I feel I’ve got to earn it,” Anderson says. “The games are for the fans. I mean, if it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t be here.”

At 7 a.m. Anderson walks into the dining room at the Holiday Inn. He has coffee every morning with a diverse group of Lakeland businessmen who start their day here whether the Tigers are in town or not.

The group this day includes a banker and Lakeland’s assistant police chief. Anderson clearly is one of them. He repeats a joke he heard a couple days before from Tommy Lasorda when the Tigers played the Los Angeles Dodgers.

“To us, he’s just a friend,” says John D. Goddard Jr., the banker.

On the way to Tigertown, Anderson talks about the changes he has seen in the game he loves.

“To me, the biggest change is the media,” he says. “It used to be that they never looked for any dirt. They’d seen all that, or were doing it themselves. Today, that’s all a lot of guys look for. They want sidebars on the player’s love life, who’s getting along with the manager.

“I don’t see what that’s got to do with baseball. To me, baseball’s the game. It’s only what he does on the field that counts to me.”

By 7:45 a.m. Anderson is eating a light breakfast with Bill Lajoie, the Tigers’ general manager, in the sprawling dining hall where the minor leaguers are fed. He and Lajoie go way back. They were roommates in the minor leagues when both played for Toronto in the International League.

“He has a great rapport with the players and the press,” Lajoie says. “When I first knew him years ago, he was a very quiet man. He’s done what he’s had to do to change his personality. He’s an extrovert, now, instead of an introvert.”

Anderson and Lajoie frequently disagree over the shape of the team; which players to keep, which ones to go after. Lajoie says one gives in to the other about 50 percent of the time.

It’s one of the few places where Anderson has to make compromises. In the clubhouse, he is the undisputed ruler. Some teams look for a player with leadership qualities. On the Tigers, the leader is the manager.

It’s easy for him, however, because Anderson virtually molded this team in his own image. Players like Ron LeFlore, Champ Summers, Steve Kemp and Jason Thompson were broomed early; they weren’t his type.

Anderson’s Tigers have good work habits -- they like to practice -- and they have good habits off the field. Kirk Gibson and Tom Brookens, for example, both signed contracts in January with voluntary drug testing clauses.

“Players have changed,” Anderson says. “I see them as better, more intelligent. They stay in better condition.

“In my time, you couldn’t afford to stay in condition (during the off-season) like that. We all had to work in the winter--sell cars, work for some beer distributor, something. But, gosh almighty, the minimum big league salary is $62,500. With that kind of money, he can rest up in the winter, do his physical conditioning work and stay in tremendous condition now.”

By 8:15 a.m., Anderson’s walking across from the dining hall to the club house at Joker Marchant Stadium, a modern concrete structure named after a former parks and recreation director.

The fans, hardcore autograph hounds, spot the familiar mane of white hair and swoop down upon him. Off to one side his boyhood chum and best friend, Billy Consolo, watches and smiles.

“You wouldn’t know to watch him now what a shy person he used to be,” says Consolo, whom Anderson brought along as a coach when he took the Detroit job June 12, 1979. “You know, he got a ring out of a machine when he was young and gave it to the only girl he knew. They’re still married to this very day.

“He’s really a very big family man. He just loves his kids. Crying out loud, he has to buy three of everything, he’s just so crazy about all of them.”

Consolo notes, however, that Anderson is all business when it comes time to pull on the uniform.

“He was always a pepper pot as a player,” Consolo says. “He’s always been a winner as a manager. Of course, you’ve got have the horses to win. But what a lot of people fail to realize is that he’s a very good teacher.

“Some of these young guys could learn a lot from George, both on and off the field.”

By 9 a.m. George Anderson is in uniform and on the field. Clearly, now, he’s Sparky again; a man comfortable in both roles because he created them himself.