Inge Coaches U-M Players With Dedication, Spirit, Fun-Loving Attitude He Brought to Tigers

All-Star third baseman has bonded with Bakich, players as volunteer, telling Wolverines to view him as a teammate

Brandon Inge got acquainted with Michigan coach Erik Bakich while preparing to co-host a gala for the Chad Tough Foundation — which raises funds for cancer research in the name of Chad Carr, the late grandson of Wolverine football Hall of Famers Lloyd Carr and Tom Curtis.

(Photo Courtesy of University of Michigan)

By Steve Kornacki

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Brandon Inge will make you smile quickly and often. I learned that while covering him when he played for the Detroit Tigers, and now Michigan baseball players and coaches are discovering what fun it is to be around the retired All-Star third baseman.

There is mischief in his dancing eyes and warmth in his heart. There is a joke to be told or a funny phone photo to be shared.

Roy Campanella, Hall of Fame catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers glory teams known as “The Boys of Summer,” once said, "You have to have a lot of little boy in you to play baseball for a living." And Inge definitely had that going for him. Still does.

“His greatest gift as a coach is also his greatest gift as a player and also his greatest gift as a human being,” said Wolverine coach Erik Bakich. “Brandon Inge is a great dude. Not a good dude. He is a great dude. You don’t stick in the big leagues for 13 years unless you’re a great dude.

“Knowing what our locker room is like with him and being with him every day in the hitting cages and on the field, he’s a magnet. And he cracks everybody. He’s got one of those personalities that is just so great, and he’s funny. Everything about him, you just want to be around him. You find yourself smiling all the time. The energy he infuses into everyone – he’s got a gift in that regard.”

I recently spoke with Inge about his experiences with the Wolverines – coaching them, he says, like he’s one of their teammates -- as well as the dozen years he spent with the Tigers before closing out his career with the Oakland A’s and Pittsburgh Pirates.

Inge played on the worst team in American League history in 2003, when Detroit lost 119 times, and three years later was sparking an American League pennant winner. He got his bat going in the ALCS against Oakland and hit .353 in the 2006 World Series the Tigers lost to the St. Louis Cardinals.

“I got hot,” said Inge. “Thank God.”

He said Magglio Ordonez’s walk-off homer to clinch the pennant was the best moment of his career.

“Nothing else was even close,” said Inge. “That was awesome. People still come up to all of us and say, ‘I remember where I was that moment. It was the greatest moment of my life.’ ”

He said the personal highlight was making the 2009 All-Star team in a season when he hit 21 of 27 homers in the first half and added a career-best 84 RBI while batting .230 and robbing countless opponents of hits at the hot corner.

“I just wish I could’ve got a Gold Glove,” said Inge. “I still, to this day, thought I should’ve won one. But I think that award goes too much to adding offense into it. I took pride in not laying up on a ball. I went after every single play because if I get the ball, I help out my pitcher.”

And he said the best game he ever played in was one the Tigers lost – Game 163 in 2009, a winner-take-all affair played before 54,088 raucous fans at the Metrodome in Minneapolis.

Inge gave Detroit a lead it couldn’t hold with an RBI-double in the 10th and should’ve had another go-head ribbie with the bases loaded in the 12th. However, in a time before replay reviews, Inge getting nicked on his jersey was not correctly called a hit-by-pitch. His team’s sixth run didn’t score because Inge then grounded into a force-out at home before catcher Gerald Laird struck out to end the inning. The Twins won, 6-5, in the bottom of the 12th.

“That is the greatest game I’ve ever played in in my life,” said Inge, 43. “I remember a feeling after that game I never felt in my life before or since – pure mental and physical exhaustion. I sat in my chair for 20 minutes after it. Every guy laid everything he had on the field that day, and it was the loudest stadium I’d ever played in.”

However, he learned something in that game that he also experienced in losing 119 games.

“It was a gut-check from 2001 to 2003,” said Inge. “But once we got a better team in place (signing free agents Ivan Rodriguez and Ordonez) we took that mindset we developed in the tough times to become champions. That never-give-up mindset carries over. It was fun to see where we were at our lowest and then where we got to in the highest. It was a lot of fun.”

And those lessons are among the ones Inge brings to the Wolverines, whom he connected with by pure chance. Inge said he was scheduled to co-host a gala with Bakich last year for the Chad Tough Foundation that was canceled due to COVID-19.

“Then Erik called me one day last year out of the blue,” said Inge, whose family is good friends with Jason and Tammi Carr, the parents of Chad, who died from an inoperable brain tumor. “It was after (pitching coach) Chris Fetter went to the Tigers and Michael Brdar and Ako Thomas (who succeeded Brdar as volunteer coach) went to pro ball.

“Erik said, ‘Hey, man, you want to be on the coaching staff with us?’ And I knew in my mind that coaching at the college level is probably where I can be most beneficial. I have experience and had a lot of failures that can actually help them not repeat the failures I had. So, I talked to the family to see if they’re alright with it. I called back and said, ‘Yeah, man, I’m 100-percent in. I can’t wait.’ ”

He found a kindred spirit in Bakich, and players were attracted to the “magnet”.

“I’m so glad I did this,” said Inge. “These guys are awesome and the coaching staff is awesome. Bakich is a good dude, a really good dude. He’s one of the best motivators I’ve ever seen in my life. For the college age group, he says the things to make ‘em tough and puts them through the rigors to make them tough.

“He over-trains them; it’s almost like a Navy Seal-type of training. It’s like, ‘I’m going to over-train you so you know what you are capable of. If you can make it through this training, you can make it through anything.’ It was like my off-season training – which made everything else so easier. And what he’s doing – he trains them to be good teammates, good human beings, so when they leave the University of Michigan, they can go out and represent the teams they were on. He does an unbelievable job, especially in the classroom and in giving these guys good core values.”

The Wolverines went from getting one of the last at-large berths in the NCAA tournament to the championship game in the College World Series and a second-place national finish in 2019. In 2020, Michigan was ranked No. 1 in polls for the first time.

Inge said, “When Erik signed me on, he said, ‘Do whatever you want to do and run whatever you want to run and just develop the guys.’ That’s Bakich being Bakich: ‘You’ve seen more than I’ve seen and forgotten more than I’ll ever learn.’ The way I approach this is what I told them when I got there: ‘Assume that I’m a teammate or yours and not a coach.’ I learned more from my teammates than I ever did the coaches.

“I’d watch Miggy (Miguel Cabrera) take batting practice and I learned more, player-to-player. And I want (the Wolverines) to talk to me about any situation. I want to be a player and a friend. ‘I want to be there for anything you need.’ We talk about what pitches to steal on in certain counts and certain situations. I throw batting practice every single day, a thousand pitches a day, and me and Schnabs (assistant coach Nick Schnabel) will throw until they’re done hitting as much as they want. They get more work than anyone does.”

Brandon Inge had a powerful swing and a pair of 27-homer seasons (2006 and 2009) while also batting .353 in the 2006 World Series.

(Photo Courtesy of Detroit Tigers)

And that’s where that mentality Campanella outlined comes into play. Being like kids on a sandlot, throwing and hitting ceaselessly, allows improvement to come, and come with smiles.

“Inge is an example of a guy who has a lot of passion for the game,” said Wolverine relief pitching standout Joe Pace, “and still has a little kid’s mentality. He brings a lot of energy and a lot of passion to our guys. He made a ton of money playing and he’s coaching us because he loves baseball. He’s one of us now. He’s a Michigan Man now.

“And it’s been so much fun getting to know him. He’s awesome. He brings energy, big smile on his face.”

Inge also was a gamer.

“He has this tenacity for competing,” said Bakich, “He’s so immersed in that moment of competing. It’s just a throwback to that old-school toughness and grit and relentless passion. When you see him, you say, ‘That’s it! That’s how you compete.’

“That’s what it takes to be a champion and be a winner. He has all the ‘it’ factors and it’s awesome to be around. He’s added so much value to our program, and added a friend to all of us.”

Inge, 5-foot-11 and 190 pounds, had been a shortstop and relief pitcher at Virginia Commonwealth when Detroit drafted him in the second round in 1998. But he was immediately converted to catcher and would throw out 40 would-be base-stealers in 2003 to lead the American League.

He found a home at third base in 2005 and led the league in assists at that position for three consecutive years. The 398 assists in ’05 broke Detroit’s single-season record held by Aurelio Rodriguez for 31 years. Both Rodriguez and Inge had rocket arms and the ability to cover plenty of ground while deftly fielding the most difficult hops.

When I told Inge only five major leaguers ever exceeded his assist total – first-ballot Hall of Famers Brooks Robinson and Mike Schmidt, Doug DeCinces, Harlond Clift and record-holder Graig Nettles (412, 1971) – he said he’d never heard that.

Inge also led the league in third baseman double plays (42 in 2005), fielding percentage (.977 in 2010) and in errors three different seasons. But he got many of those errors by reaching balls nobody else could, and not getting the out. Inge played defense the right way – with no regard for his own statistics and the solitary focus of getting outs.

But he also played plenty of center field and every position on the diamond except pitcher in the majors. That, along with his college pitching, provides him the extremely unique ability to expertly tutor any player.

“I’m working with the infielders and the catchers, too,” said Inge, who finished with 1,166 hits, 152 homers and 648 RBI. “I’m good at taking a guy where he wants to go, and getting them there. But I would never want to be a head coach. I’m good at development. And you couldn’t pay me enough to coach in the minor leagues or manage in the majors. I’m not going to listen to a GM (general manager) telling me how to run a ballclub from the press box. The game gets micro-managed way too much these days.”

Inge said Tigers minor league catching instructor Glenn Ezell and Bill Freehan – the Wolverine star and former head coach who was an 11-time All-Star for Detroit – impacted him along with Hall of Famer Alan Trammell, Triple Crown winner Cabrera, World Series hero Kirk Gibson, All-Star catcher Lance Parrish, American League batting champion Ordonez, All-Star infielders Carlos Guillen and Placido Polanco, and manager Jim Leyland.

“I was constantly around guys with unbelievable knowledge,” said Inge, named the Major League Baseball Players Association’s Marvin Miller Man of the Year in 2010 for on-field and off-field excellence. “Vance Wilson was probably the most impactful (teammate) for me. He watched my swing, watched me fielding, gave me feedback good and bad. But it was thousands of guys who helped me.”

Inge commanded as much clubhouse respect as any player I wrote about, and did something I never saw another person in the Tiger organization do. He put Cabrera in his place when he lost his temper one day, and the superstar slugger stopped what he was doing and completely backed off.

“We had a good relationship,” said Inge. “We respected each other. Plus, he knew I was slightly crazy and didn’t care. That partly had something to do with it.”

On Leyland: “He has one of the biggest hearts of anyone I’ve been around.”

He absorbed everything from premier players and managers before learning how to teach and develop talent.

He coached at the Legacy Center in Brighton and Detroit Country Day to gain coaching experience before joining Michigan. He makes the daily round-trip from the northwest Detroit suburb of Bloomfield, and isn’t sure if he’ll continue in his current role because his sons are playing demanding baseball schedules. His wife, Shani, is usually driving first baseman-second baseman-third baseman Chase, 13, to Indianapolis for games with the ultra-competitive Indiana Bulls. Tyler, 16, made the Country Day varsity as a freshman third baseman.

“We’re in a thousand different places at once now,” said Inge. “And we take a mobile home all over the place in the summers to watch them play.”

Their proud father had their names boldly tattooed onto the top of his forearms on a West Coast road trip in 2009, and now is amazed at how time has flown by.

Inge doesn’t know what the future holds for him, but Bakich hopes it’s in Ann Arbor.

“I feel like we were separated at birth,” said Bakich. “I love him, and I hope we can hang onto him forever. And if we don’t, I’ll be friends with him forever.”

Brandon Inge had the names of sons Chase, now 13, and Tyler, 16, tattooed onto the top of his forearms in 2009, when he was voted onto the American League All-Star team by fans.

(Photo Courtesy of Detroit Tigers)