LAKELAND, Fla. – It still gets him, pops up when he’s fading out on his couch, chilling, or when he’s driving from Sarasota, Fla., back to Lakeland, and it’s 5:30 in the morning, and the sun hasn’t risen yet and his best friend in baseball is sitting next to him.
“We had some good numbers in ’06, didn’t we, Geno?” Jim Leyland might say to Gene Lamont, his former bench coach and confidant, and current best bud for life.
It’s a low-grade sting when it happens, when Leyland thinks about how close he was to that ring.