Schembechler Unable to Fade Into Background in Detroit

Bo Schembechler fooled a lot of people, including himself, by refusing to fade away after leaving college football to become president of the Detroit Tigers.

It was just over a year ago that Schembechler shocked the sports world with the announcement that he was leaving the University of Michigan to take up a new career in professional baseball.

“I remember telling my wife (Millie) when I took this job, ‘Look Mill, I know this is going to be a drastic departure but don’t worry about it,”’ Schembechler said recently. “I said, ‘I’ll be in an administrative capacity and I won’t be on television. I’ll be doing just the things I want to do.

“‘And the best part is I’ll disappear right into the woodwork.”’

But that was before Cecil Fielder hit 51 home runs, before beloved broadcaster Ernie Harwell was fired, before general manager Bill Lajoie mysteriously resigned to become a scout for Atlanta, and before free agent pitcher Jack Morris signed with Minnesota.

“After the crap hit the fan on this Ernie Harwell thing, Millie looks at me, shakes her head and says, ‘Well, you really did a great job of fading into the woodwork, didn’t you?”’ Schembechler said.

He also has found himself caught in the middle of the Tiger Stadium issue. A vocal group of fans would like to see baseball continue at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull, as it has since 1912. Schembechler is committed to a new ballpark.

“I like Tiger Stadium,” he said. “It’s been there for a long time. I also like the Coliseum in Rome. It’s been there a long time, too. But nobody’s playing there anymore, either.”

Despite the Tigers’ image problems--or perhaps because of them--season ticket sales are up. That’s good news because attendance at Tiger Stadium has declined from 2.7 million in 1984 to 1.5 million last year. The Tigers haven’t ranked higher than seventh in the American League in attendance since 1985.

“My first year was, as you might say, ‘Wow.’ I had no idea,” Schembechler said. “But we’ve accomplished some things.”

As it turns out, Schembechler has accomplished a great deal. He said when he took the job that player development would be a top priority and he has kept his promise.

Schembechler has taken a direct interest in the minor leagues and scouting. He sat in on meetings. He visited every Detroit minor league team. Then he took action.

He spent millions to build a weight room at Tiger Stadium and to upgrade the Tigers’ spring training facility in Lakeland, Fla., where a new weight room and indoor batting cages have been built since the end of the 1990 season. He hired a full-time strength and conditioning coach.

He also has plans to add weight training and conditioning facilities at the team’s minor league affiliates. And he has added scouts and hired extra coaches for each minor league club.

“Baseball has always laughed at itself for having five major league coaches,” said Joe McDonald, the Tigers’ director of player development who also is filling in for Lajoie. “Where the need is below, we didn’t have any. Now we’ve gone a step further.”

Schembechler also has insisted that each Detroit minor league club have a manager who teaches, a batting coach and a pitching coach. And the club has added Jim Davenport to the big league staff. He’ll be used at Tiger manager Sparky Anderson’s discretion.

“We want to have a Tiger system, a program, where a guy comes in as a rookie and goes all the way through the system to the big leagues,” Schembechler said. “We’ve got to have more Travis Frymans coming up. We can’t have an Alan Trammell and then wait 10 years before we bring up a Fryman.

“It’ll probably take five years before any of this pays off for the big club. But we’ve got to do it this way. We’ve got to develop our own players. This baseball team just can’t afford free agents.”

Of course, this is something akin to the way college coaches funnel new talent into their systems. But Schembechler doesn’t think that’s all bad.

In fact, he thinks major league ballplayers could take many lessons from the collegians. It bothers him, for instance, to see ballplayers watching a game show on the clubhouse television before a game. He thinks they could spend their time better, perhaps studying videotapes of themselves the last time they faced the pitcher scheduled for that night.

“But I don’t go into the clubhouse and tell Sparky how to run it,” Schembechler said. “One thing a coach does not do is interfere with another coach.”

But it may not be easy.

“That will never leave me,” he said. “I was a football coach for the better part of 40 years. I’m not a coach anymore, but in my heart I’ll always be a coach.”

A bit of the feisty coach still slips out once in a while, especially on the subject of people who say he isn’t competent to run a major league baseball team. It came up repeatedly on the team’s winter publicity tour recently.

“You hear a lot of stuff, but you’ve got to understand,” Schembechler said. “Those are all Michigan State people. I beat them so many times when I was coaching that now they think they finally have a chance to get me.”

Some things never change.