Changes continue within the Tigers staff, a year after Scott Harris arrived as team chief, and now include the search for a new director of team travel.
Brian Britten, who has been with the Tigers for 23 years — the last 10 as travel director — is departing.
Britten was the fourth such travel superintendent in modern Tigers times following Charley Creedon, Vince Desmond, and Bill Brown, with Britten taking control in April 2013, following 13 years working in the Tigers’ media-relations department.
Directing team travel — “traveling secretary,” as the title formerly was known — is viewed in MLB circles as a stressful and endlessly thankless post, where perfection in an imperfect travel world is expected and demands are infinite.
Arranging flights, hotels, buses, accommodations, the transfer of players — new and established — to and from big-league and minor-league rosters can be a relentless stream of pressured and high-anxiety exercises. Often, at best, the work can lead to casual reception when schedules and connections run flawlessly. And to grumbling and fury when even slight inconveniences slip into the hours, days, weeks and months that govern an MLB team from spring camp into autumn.
Britten, a Perrysburg, Ohio, native and 1999 Bowling Green University graduate, worked for the Triple-A Toledo Mud Hens before joining the Tigers’ media-relations team in March 2000.
The Tigers have made several high-profile changes since Harris 13 months ago was named Tigers director of baseball operations.
David Chadd, an assistant general manager under former GM Al Avila, was freed and later took a job as a special-assignment scout with the Phillies. Scott Pleis, the team’s previous director of amateur scouting, was an early departure after Harris arrived. Jim Schmakel, who for four decades-plus had been the Tigers’ home clubhouse manager, was re-assigned last year to the visitor’s clubhouse at Comerica Park.
The Tigers also are on watch for a new television broadcast play-by-play general after Bally Sports Detroit decided against returning Matt Shepard to the booth in 2024.
Lynn Henning is a freelance writer and retired Detroit News sports reporter.