Brandon Inge has seen just about everything on a baseball field.
From the ball fields at Brookfield High School in Lynchburg, Virginia, and his collegiate days at Virginia Commonwealth, to an MLB career spanning parts of two decades, featuring a World Series, an All-Star Game and a Home Run Derby, he’s seen every level the game has to offer.
But last weekend, when the Michigan baseball team made a run in the Big Ten tournament as the No. 5 seed, knocking off each of the top four teams in the conference to earn a bid to the NCAA tournament, something happened for the first time.
“I don’t know if it was because I was a player at the time and so involved in it, or now I’m older and more emotional, but I never shed one tear when I was with the Tigers,” Inge said in a phone call with the Free Press. “Even going to the World Series, which was the dream. But when I was watching those guys on the field (Sunday), watching how hard they competed, I had to hold back tears.
“Legitimately hold back tears, that’s how proud I was of all of them.”
It’s the feeling Inge has been chasing since his playing career ended nearly 10 years ago. Inge played in the MLB for 13 years, notably spending parts of 12 of them with the Detroit Tigers before finishing with Oakland and Pittsburgh.
After more than 1,500 games, 5,000 at bats, 152 home runs and 1,166 hits, Inge retired from the game he says “gave him everything” following the 2013 season.
While he never stopped loving the game, he said parts of it just weren’t the same.
“When I finished playing, I wasn’t planning on getting back into baseball, I was kind of burned out and tired,” Inge said. “I love the game, but when you play at a higher level and you realize a lot of the things that happen in the front office and things that aren’t in the best interest of our sport which I love it kind of frustrates you.
“So I didn’t watch baseball for a while when I got out.”
MORE ON MICHIGAN BASEBALL: The Wolverines were down bad. Here’s how they made another NCAA tournament
This is supposed to be a fun sport
After he retired, Inge and his wife, Shani, moved their boys Tyler, now 17, and Chase, 15, back to Virginia.
Inge said he loved growing up in Virginia and wanted his boys to have the same experience and perhaps even more opportunity given what Inge had been able to accomplish.
But Inge didn’t like what he saw when his kids started to join youth baseball leagues.
“I saw some of the coaches that were coaching and I was like ‘good grief, this is supposed to be a fun sport,'” he said. “Then I saw the parents and coaches who were taking it like it was life or death.
“They looked like they were sucking all the fun out of it and so once I saw that, I was like ‘OK, I’m getting into the coaching thing and going to help my kids out.'”
He said he wanted to just “dip my toe” in, but it didn’t take long before he realized how much he enjoyed coaching. Though he realized a few years later things weren’t quite working the way he’d hoped back in Virginia.
Inge said the schools weren’t the same as when he grew up and his boys missed their friends in Michigan.
“I guess selfishly my wife and I were like ‘OK, we’re going to go get a nice piece of land in Virginia and retire there,'” Inge said. “Plans change when your kids are like ‘nah, we don’t like it.'”
So the Inges moved back to Michigan where Tyler and Chase began attending U-M baseball camps.
It was there, and through various charity events for the ChadTough Foundation, where Inge and Michigan baseball coach Erick Bakich began to form a relationship.
“You could tell he cares about his organization and so we had a normal professional relationship from an ex-player to a coach now, that type of relationship,” Inge recalled. “But then getting involved with the ChadTough stuff we became closer because when you’re doing something for a cause like that, you start to realize people have a lot of good inside of them.”
It was in the winter before the 2021 season when Inge, on a ski trip in northern Michigan, got a phone call.
“One day, totally out of the blue, he called me and was like ‘hey, want to come coach with us?'” Inge said. “I was like ‘well, I have nothing going on, so yeah.’
“It’s been literally the best thing that’s ever happened.”
Those guys are savages
Inge has now been a volunteer assistant on staff for two years, both of which have seen the Wolverines make the NCAA tournament.
He works with the team both on offense and defense, hits fungos, throws batting practice and coaches first base. But above all else, he shares his insight, which nobody else in the program can replicate.
“Major league players are the Navy SEALs of baseball,” Bakich said. “They’re a finished product, they’ve seen so many games, so many innings, so many scenarios, so many situations, there’s nothing that comes up he hasn’t seen before.
“For him, the last two years to share his experience and knowledge with these guys is priceless and they love him, he’s hilarious.”
Inge was mic’d up during the Big Ten tournament last week and could often be heard giving his players a hard time or making jokes about how all he does at first base is say “get back.”
But he does believe that Michigan is the perfect level to coach at — the players are skilled enough to understand the game at a high level and make adjustments, but there isn’t the same sort of and micromanagement from front offices.
“Once you get into the pro ranks, there’s too many politics and they don’t allow you to coach the way that baseball players should coach,” he said. “I think they’re kind of making you conform to what the front office guys want you to do but in college it’s different.
“I can see something on the field from past experiences and some of the players that I played with, the best in the world, and tell these guys just something I’m seeing and they can legitimately put it into motion immediately and that’s probably the most gratifying part about it.”
The other part he loves best, is the passion.
Michigan had Big Ten tournament games that ended after 2 a.m. some nights. They will take a bus down to Louisville for the NCAA tournament. The mornings are early and the nights are late. But Inge, Bakich and the players don’t mind.
“Those guys are savages, absolute savages,” he said. “You talk about getting off the field at 2 in the morning, not caring, not whining; not one time did I hear somebody complain about being tired or the schedule being grueling.
“I can’t think back to very many days even in the major leaguers where I didn’t have a guy or two whine about a couple things.”
It gave me everything
Inge still smiles when he thinks back on his days in Detroit, even if his ties with the Tigers aren’t as strong as before.
The people he has the most contact with these days are former Michigan pitching coach Chris Fetter, who holds the same position with Detroit, and Tigers assistant hitting coach Mike Hessman.
Oh, and another one of his ex-teammates, Miguel Cabrera.
“l’ll text back and forth with Miggy every once in a while, mainly congratulating him on being old and still able to function,” Inge laughed. “Miggy is an awesome guy. He may not be the way he was in his prime and I said this when he was playing … Miguel Cabrera in his prime is one of if not the best hitter of all time in the game of baseball.
“I stand by that. I watched him every day, it’s unreal what that guy would do.”
Inge still follows the Tigers. He’s well aware the team’s 19-30 record is nowhere near where fans wanted or expected. He knows patience is running extremely thin.
He didn’t give the front office any outs or excuses, but he did say after watching the decisions that have been made in recent years, his expectations were not sky high for this season for one main reason.
“Everyone on the outside always wants it done immediately and in order to do that you have to spend a lot, a lot of money in a short period of time,” he said. “Yeah, they’re making small moves here and there spending some money, but let’s be honest, to spend you have to win money.
“So I wasn’t expecting a World Series run. I know everybody wants a World Series run pretty quickly, but you’ve got to put the money out there before that’s going to happen.”
Inge called moving his family back to Michigan “the best decision we ever made.” Tyler is a sophomore shortstop for Birmingham Detroit Country Day, while Chase will soon be in high school as well (class of 2026).
Inge said short of his wife and kids, nothing has given him more in this life than baseball. It’s why he’s so glad his time has worked out with Michigan, somewhere he doesn’t plan on leaving soon.
And the memories, those aren’t leaving anytime soon either.
“Magglio Ordoñez making contact with that home run against the Oakland A’s and watching the entire stadium like a cathedral stand up at one time with beer splashing everywhere,” Inge said of his favorite moment. “That memory, I don’t think I could ever shed it.
“Then watching (Placido) Polanco hop around like a child down the third baseline, that was hysterical.”
Contact Tony Garcia at apgarcia@freepress.com. Follow him on twitter at @realtonygarcia.
Kings of ping
Matchup: Michigan (32-26) vs. Oregon (35-23), NCAA baseball tournament, Louisville regional.
First pitch: 7 p.m. Friday; Jim Patterson Stadium, Louisville, Kentucky.
TV: ESPN+ app.
At stake: Winner will play winner of Louisville-Southeast Missouri State game on Saturday. Loser will play loser of other game in elimination game.
Matchup: Central Michigan (42-17) vs. No. 13 seed Florida (39-22), NCAA baseball tournament, Gainesville regional.
First pitch: 6:30 p.m. Friday; Florida Ballpark at Alfred A. McKethan Field.
TV: ESPN+ app.
At stake: Winner will play winner of Oklahoma-Liberty game on Saturday. Loser will play loser of other game in elimination game.