USA Today: Nightengale: Amid big expectations, just paper Tigers so far

The ashtray is filled with cigarette butts and the pack of Marlboros is sitting next to an empty bag of chips inside the visiting manager’s office at Arizona’s Chase Field, but Jim Leyland is just getting started. The Detroit Tigers manager takes off his spikes, opens a new box of cigarettes, lights up to ease the pain of another defeat Sunday and starts to talk about the most exasperating season of his 17-year managerial career.

“I’m embarrassed. We all are,” Leyland says. “I really can’t believe this is happening, to be honest with you.

“I’m not going to throw any players under the bus, but at the same tine, I’m not going to b———- them either. You have to tell it like it is. “And we have played h————. I say we, not them, because I’m responsible.”

...“It seems like they kind of broke up our team chemistry when they got rid of Sean Casey and good people like that,” says Grilli, now with the Colorado Rockies. “You wanted guys like that around. You wanted a guy like Inge playing behind you, knowing he would go through a brick wall.

Or as Robert Wally Moses once said…“If you elect a low-grade matinee idol mayor of the clubhouse, you’re going to have a musical comedy administration.”