Not long ago and not far away, the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks in Albion welcomed a special guest speaker to their annual dinner — former University of Michigan QB Rick Leach.
Myself and sports editor Chip Mundy were more than pleased when we received an invitation to the gala event, not realizing it would lead to a controversial issue.
Leach in the fall of 1983 was wrapping up his fourth season as a member of the Detroit Tigers. He chose baseball over football, even though the enjoyed a stellar career as the field general for the Wolverine football team and was the Big 10 player of the year in 1978.
Leach put in a couple of years in the Minor Leagues before being elevated to the Tigers in 1980. He was used sparingly and his stats were not bad, but not good. In 1981 and 1982 he was a backup first baseman to Richie Hebner and an occasional replacement in the outfield.
When he took the podium, Leach jumped right into an astonishing presentation in which he shared his disappointment with the Tigers’ organization and with Manager Sparky Anderson. He earnestly told the audience he had tried to please Sparky and candidly asked him what he had been doing wrong to cause him to ride the pine so much. Leach came to the Tigers about the same time as another local football star, Kirk Gibson, who was seeing a whole lot of more action on the diamond than Leach.
So he confessed that he wasn’t really looking forward to the approaching 1984 season, particularly with Detroit giving a long look at fancy fielding Dave Bergman at first base.
So Chip Mundy took that speech by Leach as a fat pitch to be hit out of the ballpark with a column for the Albion Evening Recorder. However, many of the Elks members and some Detroit Tigers reps present took issue with the understanding the Recorder would tell its readership what Leach had said. They insisted this was a private dinner and if we insisted on printing this story, Leach could get into trouble with the Tigers and we probably would never be welcomed again.
Chip and I were undaunted. We told everybody we would be fools to look the other way when a very well known athlete made such honest and controversial comments right in our back yard. It would be tantamount to failure to properly do our jobs of informing the public.
So we proceeded with publishing Chip’s column in the interests of telling the truth rather than sweeping it under the rug.
Sure enough, in March of 1984, about a month before the start of the now famous 1984 championship season, Leach was released from his contract to play baseball in Detroit. He then was picked up by the Toronto Blue Jays, and in one year, 1986, he actually hit a career high .309.
He finished his relatively brief career with only 18 home runs and a cumulative .268 batting average.
I suppose there were some who thought we were unfair to Leach, the Tigers and the Elks for insisting on telling the truth.
But to this day, I stand by the right of a free and independent press publishing stories and information to benefit the public, which has a right to know, as long as what was presented was true. I’m kind of old school that way.
As the Cyrcle sang in their 1966 hit song, “There’s a lesson to be learned from this and I learned it very well.”
