It all began with Pudge

At a time when many free agents wouldn't even take the Tigers' calls, the future Hall-of-Famer committed.

Chris McCosky / The Detroit News

DETROIT -- If he could have, Pudge Rodriguez would have circled the bases with Magglio Ordonez after his American League Championship Series-clinching home run Saturday.

It would have been a fitting victory lap for Rodriguez, the first building block -- the foundation piece, really -- of president Dave Dombrowski's Detroit baseball reclamation project.

As it was, he had to be content hopping up and down and waving his arms in excited anticipation of Ordonez's arrival at the plate.

"I couldn't wait for him to touch home plate so I could jump on his (butt)," Rodriguez said after the blast put the Tigers in the World Series. "I am very excited, but mostly I'm very happy for my teammates who had to go through all those losing seasons. For all the hard work they put in, this World Series is for them."

Rodriguez and Kenny Rogers are the only players on the roster with World Series rings. Rodriguez won his with Florida in 2003, that year of dread for the Tigers. Rogers won his in 1996 with the Yankees.

"This one is very special for me, very special," Rodriguez said. "When I came here, they ask me, 'Why do you come here?' People thought I was crazy. But I never thought the Detroit Tigers were a bad baseball team. I thought they had a bad year. That's all."

If you want to mark the point of the turnaround, start with Feb. 6, 2004.

That's the day owner Mike Ilitch and Dombrowski signed Rodriguez to a four-year, $40 million contract.

"It was the first time we were able to attract a quality player to sign in Detroit," Dombrowski told the Miami Herald last week. "He is a perennial All-Star and a future Hall-of-Famer. For him to be receptive about coming to Detroit, I think it opened people's minds about coming here. That was the start of us getting better."

On that day, Ilitch made a promise.

"He told me that he's going to put a winning team together," Rodriguez said. "I'm very happy for the organization. They did what they told me."

It was hardly an overnight transformation. Rodriguez hit .334 in 2004, helped raise the team profile by getting two hits, including a triple, in the All-Star Game and the Tigers won 72 games, a 29-game bump from 2003.

But things quickly went sour in 2005. The big story of spring training was Rodriguez's noticeable weight loss. The speculation was the weight had fallen off after he had stopped using performance-enhancing drugs. Rodriguez, who never failed a drug test, defended himself against the charges -- and still does -- but the distraction took a toll.

Not only was Rodriguez struggling on the field (his .276 average would be his worst since 1993), but he was having issues off the field, as well. His marriage was dissolving, as was his relationship with manager Alan Trammell.

Rodriguez played in just 129 games. Many felt he had abandoned a sinking ship. The Tigers took a one-game step back in 2005, which led to the firing of Trammell and his coaching staff, and a fairly exhaustive roster-clearing.

Enter Jim Leyland. "Quite frankly, I think a lot of people thought I wouldn't get along with Pudge," Leyland said Saturday. "But it's been totally opposite. He plays hurt, he plays hard and he comes to beat the other team. For me, you can't ask for any more than that."

Leyland pulled Rodriguez aside early in the spring. He told him he needed him to be a leader, not just with the pitchers but with the entire team.

He said was going to ask Rodriguez to do a lot of things this season, things he hadn't been asked to do before.

Leyland played the 11-time Gold Glove-winning catcher at first base occasionally and even once at second base. He batted him in various spots in the order -- first and second, as well as sixth and seventh. He used him as a pinch hitter and a pinch runner. He asked him to bunt, hit behind runners, take pitches, whatever was needed.

Rodriguez never complained, and rather quickly the Tigers became a team praiseworthy for its old-school attention to detail, for its team balance and chemistry, for its ability to show up and compete for nine hard innings night after night.

"Jim Leyland deserves a lot of credit," Rodriguez said. "He is a great manager. He can be like another player sometimes, you know? He can be in here talking with us like he is one of the guys, laughing, joking. But he can also take care of business. There is no doubt about who is the boss. He is the best manager I have ever had."

Rodriguez hit .300 this season, made an AL-low two errors, threw out a major league-best 45.7 percent of would-be base stealers and helped guide a young pitching staff to the lowest ERA in the majors. If he wasn't the star, he certainly was the stabilizing force behind the Tigers improbable run to the AL pennant.

"We've been up and down, in and out. We are getting better and better and better every year," Rodriguez said. "It's finally paid off this year."

Well, not quite.

The World Series starts Saturday.

"Just give me a couple days off to rest and I will be ready," Rodriguez said. "We'll be ready."

You can reach Chris McCosky at (313) 222-1489 or chris.mccosky@detnews.com.