The Pittsburgh Pirates may have gotten themselves a good one, if ex-Tigers playoff hero Don Kelly continues to channel his mentor Jim Leyland in tight games.

In need of a spark – and coming off a win in his first game at the helm – Kelly chirped umpire Clint Vondrak regarding balls and strikes (never allowed, but always fun), then emerged from the dugout to give him a piece of his mind.

His defense of starter Andrew Heaney swiftly evolved into an ejection, which would’ve made Leyland proud. Both men who once shared a dugout in Detroit have now also held the same managerial position with the Pirates, and just because it’s Game 2 in the midst of a relatively meaningless stretch did not stop Kelly from pulling out every trick in his mentor’s book.

Pittsburgh Pirates manager Don Kelly evokes Tigers mentor Jim Leyland with ejection

Now, did it result in an immediate rally? Um, nope. It did not. But this is how you earn an A for effort, and you round the rest of the bases somewhere down the line (perhaps when your roster is a little more complete and Bob Nutting is out of the picture).

Given some difficult ingredients with which to cook, Kelly might not have a very deep playbook at the moment. But what he does have is the ability to display some good, old-fashioned tenacity, which he dusted off in only his second game as an authority figure.

Only problem? The Pirates don’t have a deep bench of possible seat-fillers, and Kelly’s ejection caused them to scramble. They were forced to figure out on the fly who’d be filling their newly minted manager’s role in case of emergency, and went with … third base coach Mike Rabelo? Ok, then. Probably time to name a bench coach, guys.

If Kelly’s Pirates pull this one out, it might go down as half as clutch as his home run and .364 average in the 2011 ALDS against the Yankees. Either way, it’s nice to see him make another notch in the long history of Pirates managerial squabbles, and surely Leyland is sitting at home, proudly chuckling.