THOUSAND OAKS : Sparky Scores Big With Talk on Leadership

The lecture topic Monday at Cal Lutheran University was leadership in sports, and former Detroit Tigers manager Sparky Anderson has had some experience with the subject.

Before his retirement last month, Anderson had compiled a career record of 2,194 wins and 1,834 losses, making him the third-winningest manager in major-league baseball. He led the Tigers to a World Series Championship in 1984 and an American League East title in 1987. His previous team, the Cincinnati Reds, made it to the World Series four times under his guidance.

Anderson told the crowd of about 250 students, professors and fans that leadership means more than winning a game. It means playing a role in one’s community. It also means, he said, accepting responsibility, including the responsibility of acting as a role model to others.

“It makes me sick every time I watch television, and I see an athlete saying he doesn’t have a responsibility to the children and the people out there,” he said. “Those children, for some reason, will listen to an athlete much more quickly than they’ll listen to the President of the United States.”

For Anderson, Monday’s lecture in the Preus-Brandt Forum was a way of practicing what he preaches. He has lived in Thousand Oaks for about 30 years.

“This is part of my territory,” he said. “If you’re not part of your community, you might as well not live there.”

The school, too, was acting out its goals, President Luther S. Luedtke said. The lecture series in which Anderson spoke is devoted to leadership in such fields as sports, science and arts--a reflection of the school’s mission to educate future leaders, Luedtke said.

“We take that very, very seriously, so the series spun out of it,” he said.

With students filling the forum’s seats and spilling into the aisles, Anderson spelled out the leadership philosophy that served him well in baseball:

Take responsibility, especially for mistakes.

Never pass blame onto others.

Be honest.

Lead quietly and by example, without showing off or mouthing off.

The ideas hit home with Lara Philby, a sophomore from San Diego on the school’s soccer team. “I actually took a lot of it to heart--being a silent leader, leading by example,” she said. “That has a lot of relevance to any sport.”

Before signing a few books and baseball bats passed his way, Anderson also fielded questions about past and current ballplayers. Responding to a question about whether Pete Rose should be accepted into the Baseball Hall of Fame despite his gambling, Anderson said he did not agree with some of the things Rose had done in his personal life. But that, Anderson said, should not keep Rose out.

“The Hall of Fame was made, in my opinion, for what you did on the field,” he said.