LAKELAND, Fla. — I came to Florida to feel old, which is strange, since Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth isn’t that far from TigerTown.
But Phil Nevin was calling from his way to the ballpark in Arizona and was talking to me about his kid Tyler, a 25-year-old corner infielder and outfielder who’s battling for a platoon job with the Detroit Tigers in spring training.
Normally, a major league manager talking about his kid doesn’t faze me. But Phil and I went to school together. The 52-year-old Los Angeles Angels skipper was a year ahead of me at Cal State Fullerton, a baseball school that molded him into the best college player in 1992, that year’s No. 1 draft pick, an All-Star with the Padres and a Tigers slugger from 1995-97.
But when someone your age is talking about his son, who happens to be a promising player with some pop in his bat and 64 major league games under his belt, it’s hard not to think about the levels on your mortality dipstick.
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Phil Nevin had a reputation as a brash young player and one of the first college players to wear Oakley sunglasses, which probably would have been Cartier Buffs today. Three decades later, he doesn’t look, act or sound anything like that. He just comes off like a dad who’s rooting for a son he never prodded to follow in his footsteps and instead encouraged him to find his own path, which also happened to lead him to also being a first-round pick, in 2015 by the Colorado Rockies.
“As a parent, I don’t know if you are not,” Phil told me, “but I think we just want our kids to do things that make them happy. Am I happy he plays baseball? I’m happy he’s doing something that he loves and he’s having some success at it. That’s what makes any parent happy.”
I told him I have kids who just started college, but that it was initially hard to hear that one of them wanted to go to art school.
“What’s wrong with art school?” Phil shot back, instantly making me feel old and stupid as I mumbled some nonsense about financial prospects.
This was Phil Nevin? The former poster boy for college baseball coolness had somehow turned into Dr. Spock? Actually, yes, if you hear what A.J. Hinch said about Tyler’s maturity level.
“I mean, he’s as polished as any player at his age and his experience level,” the Tigers manager said Tuesday shortly before Tyler reported soreness in his oblique. “He’s been around the game. His emotion — he’s almost emotionless, which is a good thing. He’s very steady with how he gets his work done.
“I mean, similar to (me and) my kids, I’m sure Phil is as hard on him as he is on his players and wanting the best for him. He can take instruction, he’s mature beyond his years and his experience level because he’s lived it.”
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Tyler did more than live it. He absorbed it in a way that’s uncannily precocious even for the kid of a major-leaguer. Toward the end of Nevin’s playing career, Tyler started becoming a student of the game, which only intensified as a young teen when his dad rejoined the Tigers organization as a manager at Double-A Erie in 2010 and Triple-A Toledo the next year.
“The big-league dads’ kids, they all wanted to go to the playroom and he never did,” Phil said. “He wore a uniform every game, he sat in the stands, he learned how to keep score. He learned everyone’s stance and he would come in the clubhouse after, if we won.”
Surprisingly, none of this came from Phil, who avoided every baseball dad cliché and just let his son enjoy the game, even when he was coaching Tyler’s travel team.
“It was just a lot about fun, not taking it too serious,” Tyler said. “Especially because I was 10, 11, 12, he was never a hard-o on me. Growing up, he just wanted me to have fun.
“And I think he instilled that in our team of just enjoy being out there. If you want to get better, get better. But if this is the end of the road for you and you just want to have fun with your buddies, that’s good, too.”
It may have been a low-pressure approach, but Phil was dead serious about being around for Tyler’s games on the West Coast from the start.
“Even when he was in Toledo,” Tyler said, “he’d take a red-eye home just to be just to be there for 12 hours and fly right back. So he always wanted to be involved as much as he could.”
That might seem a bit extreme, but Tyler’s life started with his dad taking a flight and making a very expensive phone call on the way.
Phil Nevin was just becoming an regular starter for Buddy Bell’s Tigers in May 1997 when he got word that his wife, Kristin, was about to give birth to their first son. He took a flight to their home in Arizona and called Kristin every 20 minutes for updates using one those old Airfones that passengers used by swiping a credit card.
“I was like all right, we can’t talk for more than two minutes because I’m looking at the rates on this thing,” he said. “Finally, one time we had to talk for a while because it sounded like it was gonna happen while I was in the air.”
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Fortunately, Tyler waited for dad to make it and arrived on May 29. The next day, Nevin joined the Tigers in Seattle and went 2-for-4 with a double and two RBIs. Not so fortunate was the arrival of Nevin’s Airfone bill for about $500.
Three months later, Tyler went to Tiger Stadium and watched his dad play in a major league game for the first time. Of course, he was too young to remember that experience. But Tyler remembers coming to Lakeland for spring training with his dad when he was managing in the organization and even had Jim Leyland watch one of his bullpen sessions.
“I threw bullpens on those pitching mounds out there when I was 13,” he said. “I hit in those cages when everybody was done. So I have some vague memories that aren’t too vivid. But yeah, it’s kind of funny how things come full circle sometimes.”
Now Tyler is trying to close that loop and make the Tigers out of spring training. He’s competing with other right-handed hitters for a platoon spot. Hinch liked the power Tyler showed early in camp with two homers in his first 19 at-bats, and the Tigers are trying to make him more versatile defensively as a corner outfielder and infielder.
“I think defensive usefulness is important for him to make this team,” Hinch said, “and then obviously the better he hits left-handed pitching the more you see where a niche could develop that he’s going to be a contributor to this team. If he handles right-handed pitching and left-handed pitching, now you’re talking about more and more at-bats.”
Hinch started at Stanford just as Phil ended his college career, but they’ve known each other a long time. Nevin texted Hinch his evaluation of Tyler, mostly as a manager but also as a dad.
“It’s nice to get his perspective on both as a dad,” Hinch said. “… I want to know Tyler as a person and what makes him tick, and who knows better than his father?”
Tyler appreciates his unique advantage of having a major league manager as a dad, but most of their conversations on the phone or through text have little to do with baseball.
“Yeah, some days it varies,” Tyler said. “We’ll move dive into the game deeper if it’s necessary. Yesterday we were on the phone for 20 minutes while he was going through a carwash just describing the carwash.”
But Phil doesn’t miss anything. He watches every one of Tyler’s at-bats on MLB.com. He does the same with his younger son, Kyle, a Dodgers prospect. And they definitely talk shop when Tyler feels the need.
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“When I first got in the game it was a lot of approach stuff, learning the program,” Tyler said. “Now it just depends on the day. I can be anything, honestly.
“It can be whatever I worked on on defense that day. It can be from the cage; what I’m feeling, what went good, what went wrong. It’s really just a medley.”
There’s a memory Phil treasures about how Tyler dealt with a setback after he had Tommy John surgery as a sophomore. He walked into his son’s room and saw goals written on the mirror: 4.0 student, get a college scholarship, win a state division title, be a first-round draft pick. He accomplished them all.
“It’s not often,” Phil said, “I think when a parent can say that they look up to — I look up to what his values are, and how he does his life. He does it right.”
That just might be the best thing a parent can ever say about their child.
Contact Carlos Monarrez: cmonarrez@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.