AROUND THE NL : Leyland Decides Time Is Right to Manage Family

Jim Leyland isn’t considering retiring. The Colorado Rockies manager is retiring. He is giving up $4 million over the next two years to spend more time with his wife, Katie, and their two children at their home in Pittsburgh. He may accept a less demanding position with the Rockies, but this won’t be like 1996, when he left the Pirates to manage the Florida Marlins, or last winter, when he left the Marlins to manage the Rockies.

There is a temptation to draw a link to the resignation of Terry Collins, his former coach and apprentice, as manager of the Angels, but Leyland insists he is not taking this step because of a sudden inability to motivate or communicate with young players or because of interference from Colorado owners. After a 25-year managerial career during which he has often slept in the clubhouse, as he frequently has in Colorado, it is simply more difficult to keep the fire burning and he needs to be more of a husband and father, he said.

The pivotal reminder came two weeks ago when the Rockies were in Pittsburgh and Leyland, 55, took son Patrick, 8, to Three Rivers Stadium early and hit him grounders and pitched to him. Patrick then served as the Rockies’ bat boy, wearing a uniform with the No. 11 and the name “Leyland” on the back. That night, Patrick snuggled into bed with him and said, “Dad, today was the best day of my life.”

The Rockies, who are last in the National League West, obviously needed more than the hiring of a respected manager, but General Manager Bob Gebhard was convinced Leyland was the key piece and made no other off-season moves except to sign free-agent pitcher Brian Bohanon and utility man Lenny Harris. Gebhard recently resigned under pressure, and now the Rockies need a manager and general manager, as do the Milwaukee Brewers, and as the Angels and Baltimore Orioles may.

Leyland downplayed his decision.

“Tell them this isn’t like Casey Stengel retiring,” he said to a Denver reporter he summoned onto the team bus Thursday.

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The San Diego Padres have begun a farm system overhaul by removing Jim Skaalen as player personnel director and offering the position, along with a vice presidency, to Ted Simmons, the former big league catcher and Pirate general manager who currently scouts for the Cleveland Indians. Simmons would be second in command to General Manager Kevin Towers.

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Pitchers have been willing accomplices in the home run onslaught by Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire over the last two years. They allow both to stand at the plate with impunity. Sosa has been hit by a pitch only once this year after being hit only three times last year. McGwire has been hit six times after being hit only twice last year. His St. Louis Cardinal teammate, Fernando Tatis, has been hit 12 times this year.

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Former National League crew chief Terry Tata, one of the 22 umpires whose resignations were accepted, disputes the contention that umpires are more confrontational now.

“I came up when guys like Al Barlick and Augie Donatelli were still umpiring,” he said. “All you had to do was look at those guys cross-eyed and they’d tear your head off. They’d call players names just so the player would call them a name back and they could eject him. Umpiring today is the best it’s ever been, but we’re easy targets because every close play and every argument gets shown a hundred times on ‘SportsCenter.’ ”