Jim "Jimbo" Leyland Was The Most Popular Boy At His High School 50 Years Ago

Jim Leyland held court for the media today at baseball's winter meetings, and by all indications, he put on quite a show. Craig Calcaterra over at Hardball Talk has all of the highlights—Leyland on the World Baseball Classic: "I support it because the Commissioner gets mad when I say I don't support it"—but toward the end there's this little gem:

Leyland apparently just attended his 50th high school reunion. He said he had a good time. He was asked about the women at the reunion: "They looked pretty good to me. I wonder how they thought old Jimbo looked." When people laughed he noted that, back in high school, he was voted "Most Popular Boy" and said that if we didn't believe him we could go look in his yearbook.

Calcaterra concluded his blog post with skepticism: "'Most Popular Boy,' my foot," he wrote. But wait! Leyland's son, Patrick, is a catcher who spent 2012 with the West Michigan Whitecaps, the Tigers' Single-A affiliate in the Midwest League. (Let's pause for a moment to consider that Jim Leyland, who will be 68 on Dec. 15, has a 21-year-old son. OK? OK.) And unlike his old man, Patrick is on Twitter. Several weeks back, Patrick tweeted that, while watching a football game of some sort, his father got all nostalgic for his high school years and suddenly whipped out his yearbook. Because those were the days:

Soon enough, Patrick started tweeting out photos from the yearbook:

Jimbo Leyland! Most Popular Boy in school! Check him out!

[ Hardball Talk]