Inside Baseball with Jesse Barfield

You can’t put a price on leadership

The game of baseball sure has changed.

It’s not everyday that you release the guy that lead your team in homers and RBIs the season before, but the Jays did. I guess it’s like the old Janet Jackson song, “What have you done for me lately?”

It’s a shocker for me. Why?

Everybody knows Frank Thomas is going to get hot and put up stronger numbers month by month. He has usually been a slow starter, but it will be hard to replace those numbers when it’s all said and done. I know some of the decision was due to his salary, but you can’t put a price on the leadership of a veteran player like “The Big Hurt.”

Veteran insight invaluable

What veteran players bring to the table is experience and know-how and Thomas had both. Just look at his numbers, they speak for themselves. When a young player is around a veteran like Thomas, they can talk to him about different situations, like how to solve a certain pitcher that is tough for them to hit against. The veteran can give insight on that pitcher because he has faced him several times and can pass on something he has picked up about that pitcher. That is invaluable and can make your team better, especially in the clutch.

I remember for the “Drive of ’85” Pat Gillick brought in Al Oliver, a proven veteran clutch hitter. One of the first things “Scoop” - as we called him - did was to have the team over to his home in Arlington, Texas. He wanted to get to know us and for us to know him, so he rented two buses and had a big dinner party. He made his way around to every player and talked hitting and winning that night. It set the tone for the rest of the season. We went on to win the American League East and Scoop was a huge part of that drive.

That’s one reason why I was surprised to hear manager Jim Leyland of the Detroit Tigers say that “chemistry is overrated, winning is the important thing.” Well, his team is not winning right now, so maybe he needs to rethink that philosophy.

Tigers need their own “Scoop”

What they need is an “Al Oliver” to come in and take the bull by the horn. The atmosphere has to be changed so that they can start winning and winning can create better chemistry.

After being in a club house with both good and bad chemistry, and I can tell you, good chemistry, along with talent, will take you a long way. It makes for a miserable season when the club house is negative. In that respect, I do understand why J.P. [Ricciardi] pulled the plug on Thomas because he knew he wasn’t going to be happy in that role of a part-time player.

Speaking of part-time players, Cliff Johnson was one of Major League Baseball’s best pinch hitters, so when some of us young players were struggling with pinch hitting, C.J. pulled us to the side and shared some insight and his tips were huge and helped us tremendously, especially with our platoon system at the time.

‘We are here to pass on our knowledge’

Do I see value in having veterans around? You bet I do! As a father, I have seen veterans like Mike Cameron take out a group of rookies to dinner and talk about the game, the city they were in, the ballpark and how it played, etc. I remember giving former Astro and Cardinal pitcher Daryl Kyle his first leather jacket when we were on a caravan when I coached for Houston. When he suddenly died, his wife told me how he still had that jacket and he would always take the young players out and mentor them because of what I did.

See, we are to pass on what we know to the next generation of players, that is what it’s all about.

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/baseball/barfield/2008/04/you_...price_on_leader.html