He walked into his interview with Mike Ilitch wearing cowboy boots. And the Tigers owner liked that very much.
Ilitch was drawn to Randy Smith’s youth. To his genuine Texas roots. And, maybe, to a new approach in reconstructing a Tigers team that in 1995 had just wrapped up a second consecutive brutal season and sought a fresh touch.
Smith was 32. Already he had three years as general manager with the Padres, the youngest man in history to have overseen a big-league club.
Now, that venerable old team from Detroit, a charter baseball town, with a new ballpark coming and only 11 years removed from its last World Series, was inviting him to ramrod a new-era Tigers contender.