Secure Horizons : Sparky Anderson Is Third All-Time in Victories Among Managers, and Although the Tigers Are Overachieving, He Might Be Ready to Pack It In

Sparky Anderson squeezes a pinch of tobacco into his pipe, leans back, lights up and revels in each relaxing puff. He looks so content you’d swear his uniform and cleats were a robe and slippers, his lineup card an afternoon paper and the Detroit Tiger bench a family-room recliner.

“This is where I’m most comfortable, at the park,” said Anderson, the 61-year-old Tiger manager. “I truly love to manage. It’s like opening a door and walking outside--for some reason, it’s always been easy for me. I could manage until I die.”

But for the first time in 26 major league seasons, the white-haired Anderson isn’t sure whether he’ll have that choice. Not since his early days with the Cincinnati Reds has Anderson been in the final year of a contract, as he is now with Detroit.

No extension has been negotiated, and front-office officials say he will be evaluated at the end of a season that began with Anderson causing turmoil in the organization--and nearly getting fired--because of his controversial spring-training decision not to manage replacement players.

Don’t think for a minute, though, that Anderson’s tenuous status has caused anxiety for this creature of habit, who has used the same, simple managerial approach for a career that has featured 2,171 victories, three World Series championships, five league pennants, seven division titles and enough friends to last three or four lifetimes.

“Your whole life you stand on the bank of a river and if you can get to the other side, no one can hurt you,” said Anderson, who recently became the third-winningest manager in major league history behind Connie Mack and John McGraw. “I was able this year to get to the other side.

“I’m third all-time in wins, and you can’t take that away. A guy would have to manage 26 years to catch me, and there’s not many who can do that. The security I have is I can stop when I want. I have what Don Shula and Dean Smith have--I no longer have to worry about my job.”

That’s not to say Anderson is 100% sure he’ll be asked to return next season. It’s just that he really doesn’t care. He says he wants to come back for an 18th season in Detroit, but if the club doesn’t want him back, that’s fine with him too.

One thing Anderson discovered during his leave of absence this spring is that playing golf regularly near his Thousand Oaks home, wearing warm-ups everywhere except to church Sunday morning, changing into pajamas by 5 p.m. every night and spending quality time with 11 grandchildren is not a bad alternative to the daily grind of big-league baseball.

“If they want to call me in the dugout and tell me to go home, they can do it, and I wouldn’t be angry at anyone,” said Anderson, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended Dorsey High. “Those six weeks off made me realize how much fun it is being home, and now I miss that.”

But how could Detroit justify firing Anderson? A team some preseason publications tabbed as the worst in baseball is 37-35, and Anderson has molded a group of aging veterans, no-names and youngsters into an American League East contender.

“This has been one of my most enjoyable years,” said Anderson, the only manager in history to lead two franchises (Cincinnati and Detroit) in all-time victories. “Las Vegas picked us somewhere around Siberia, and next to us was the Angels. We were supposed to be the worst team in baseball. I don’t know where we’ll end up, but I don’t think we’ll be the worst.”

Anderson has done it this season with the same formula he used to guide Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine to World Series championships in 1975 and ’76 and the Tigers to the 1984 Series title:

Get to know the players on a personal level, learn how to motivate each individual, encourage cohesiveness in the clubhouse, don’t put pressure on players, give them credit for the victories but take blame for the losses, trump up the underdog angle, fill reporters’ notebooks with clever quotes, and never, ever, leave a pitcher in for too long.

“He lets you play,” said Angel third baseman Tony Phillips, who spent five seasons in Detroit before being traded this spring. “He treats you like a man and respects you like a man. He’s straightforward, and he spends time with everyone on a personal basis. I’ve never been around another manager who does that.”

Anderson’s homespun style has always worked well with reporters. A press-box scribe once said he had a 10-minute interview with Anderson and only had to say two things: “Hi, Sparky,” and “How are you doing?”

It works with players too. “Everyone I talk to says they love playing for him,” Angel designated hitter Chili Davis said. “No one ever says anything bad about him.”

But Anderson was put on an even higher pedestal by players in February when, on the eve of spring training, he told team President John McHale Jr. that he would not partake in the fiasco that was replacement baseball.

Detroit scrambled to get triple-A Manager Tom Runnells to Lakeland, Fla., in time to oversee workouts with replacement players, while McHale and General Manager Joe Klein fumed that Anderson’s actions would undermine baseball’s management, which was trying to maintain a united front in the labor dispute.

Firing Anderson was considered, but McHale, noting Anderson’s longevity of service, instead granted him a leave of absence and asked him to return when the strike ended in April.

“He was willing to give up his career, the thing he loves best, rather than compromise his integrity and the integrity of the game by managing scabs,” Phillips said.

Added Davis: “That took a lot of courage. It showed me something, and him getting his job back was even more awesome.”

Anderson has felt no repercussions from his spring-training decision. “If you were treated any better than I am treated here, you would be the king,” he said.

Would he do it again? “About a billion times. Let me ask you this. Who was right and who was wrong? I think by the decision made [to end the strike before regular-season replacement games], I was right.”

That’s Sparky, sticking to his principles just as he does his coaching technique. When Anderson broke in with Cincinnati in 1970, the Reds had a team payroll of $750,000, and there was no such thing as free agency and arbitration in baseball.

But as average salaries skyrocketed past $1 million in the 1990s, and the nature of the game shifted from baseball to business, with its cellular phone-toting players and endorsement contract-hungry agents, Anderson has still maintained control of the Tiger clubhouse with his democratic approach.

“The game has changed, but the personalities have always been the same,” Anderson said. “Every club has the talkers, the quiet guys, the clubhouse lawyers. . . . Things haven’t really changed that much, and neither have I.”

Well, that’s not entirely true. Anderson acknowledges he’s not nearly as feisty as he was growing up on the sandlots of Los Angeles, battling through 10 seasons as a minor league infielder, or managing the Reds during the 1970s.

“My first year as a player I got kicked out of games 16 times,” said Anderson, who batted .218 for Philadelphia in 1959, his only major league season as a player. “I haven’t been kicked out more than three times a season in seven or eight years.

“I’ve finally grown up in the last 14-15 years. It took me a long time to do that. Instead of faulting umpires, I realize they make mistakes once in a while. I was almost to the point of being out of control. . . . In fact, I was out of control in the early years.”

But he has complete control of these golden years.

“I have no timetable for when I want to stop managing--the only thing that will stop me is if people don’t want me to,” Anderson said. “But that’s not my worry. My only worry is that these players continue to learn. If I never work another day, I would live a very good life.”

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Baseball’s Winningest Managers

W L % Connie Mack 3,776 4,025 .484 John McGraw 2,840 1,984 .589 Sparky Anderson 2,171 1,785 .549 Bucky Harris 2,159 2,219 .493 Joe McCarthy 2,126 1,335 .614 Walter Alston 2,040 1,613 .558 Leo Durocher 2,010 1,710 .540