Girardi and Leyland earn top honors

Florida's rookie manager was fired after the season.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Sometime soon, Joe Girardi will go looking for another job in a major league dugout. And when he does, he'll have a manager of the year award at the top of his r & eacute;sum & eacute;.
Six weeks after he was fired by Florida, Girardi won the NL honor Wednesday for keeping the rookie-laden Marlins in contention nearly all season. Jim Leyland took the AL award after a quick turnaround with the Detroit Tigers.
A rookie skipper himself, Girardi beat out Willie Randolph of the New York Mets by a comfortable margin to become the first manager of the year with a losing record.
"I don't know if vindication is a good word, just because as a manager, you want to manage," Girardi said.
He received 18 of 32 first-place votes and totaled 111 points in balloting by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. Randolph got eight first-place votes and 81 points.
"It's nice that people who watch the game every day understood what we accomplished," Girardi said, adding he wasn't particularly surprised to win. "We had a lot of good things happen."
Big turnaround
Leyland turned around the long-moribund Tigers in his first year with the team, leading them to the World Series and their first winning season since 1993. He received 19 of 28 first-place votes and 118 points to top Minnesota's Ron Gardenhire, who was listed first on nine ballots and totaled 93 points.
"I knew that we had something here. I thought it would take longer than it did. This team started believing," Leyland said. "We had good players going into spring training, but we didn't have a very good team. We made ourselves a good team and that's something I'm very proud of."
Playing 22 rookies, Girardi guided the Marlins to a 78-84 finish and had them in the playoff race until a late-September fade -- a surprisingly competitive performance for a team that was expected to lose at least 100 games.
Florida had a 15 million opening day payroll, the lowest in the major leagues by more than 20 million.
Still, he was fired two days after the season ended following a rift with owner Jeffrey Loria. Girardi has since agreed to rejoin the New York Yankees' broadcast booth, rather than seek another managing job.
"I don't believe in this case perception is reality," he said. "I wanted it to work out but it never got worked out, for whatever reason. ... We move on to bigger and better things."
Good situation
The 61-year-old Leyland appears firmly entrenched in Motown after winning his third manager of the year award -- and first in the AL. He also won with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1990 and '92.
Leyland returned to the dugout last season following a six-year hiatus, taking over a foundering Tigers team that went 71-91 in 2005. Two seasons before that, Detroit lost an embarrassing 119 games -- an AL record.
But with a deft touch and demanding approach, Leyland led the surprising Tigers to a terrific start. They struggled mightily down the stretch and squandered the AL Central title, losing out to Gardenhire's Twins on the final day of the regular season.
Still, Detroit captured the wild card for its first postseason berth in 19 years, then upset the Yankees in the first round of the playoffs before sweeping Oakland in the AL championship series.
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