In March 1981, I visited Florida’s Gulf Coast for the purpose of watching as many spring training games as I could in one week. Typically, I showed up early for the games because the players, coaches, and even managers would sometimes chat with fans.
That’s when I first encountered Tony La Russa, the 36 year-old manager of the Chicago White Sox, already starting his third season in charge. You didn’t have to see much of La Russa to realize he would likely leave a mark on baseball. (I later learned that he had a law degree, but I didn’t hold that against him.)
La Russa went on to become one of the best managers in baseball history. It’s not just that he led three different franchises to the playoffs and two of them to world championships. La Russa was an innovator. He helped redefine how relief pitchers are deployed.
La Russa retired from management after the 2011 season, in which his St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series. But he returned this year as skipper of the Chicago White Sox.
His return didn’t go down well with the hipster sportswriting community. It viewed him as hopelessly old school and out of touch.
There was a political dimension, as well. La Russa was a critic of Colin Kaepernick’s decision in 2016 to kneel during the playing of the National Anthem. And in 2010, he attended Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington, D.C. It was clear to me right away that the attacks on La Russa’s hiring, or at least their vehemence, had more to do with his “old school” politics than with baseball.
The attacks persisted as the season progressed. Sportswriters have tried to pick apart his every decision.
In at least one instance, he gave them justification. La Russa did not know the ins-and-outs of the new rules on starting extra innings with the player who made the last out on second base. As a result, he had a pitcher be that baserunner when he could have avoided this result. After the game, La Russa, a standup guy, admitted that the didn’t know the applicable twist to the rule.
Nonetheless, La Russa’s White Sox were flying high when they arrived in Minnesota this week for a series with the defending AL Central champions, the low-flying Twins. And in the series opener on Monday, the White Sox routed the Twins, 16-4.
But that game opened up a new front in the La Russa wars. With the game well out of reach, the Twins brought in Willians Astudillo to pitch.
Austudillo is a catcher and occasional infielder, not a pitcher. But having a non-pitcher complete a one-sided game is a conventional move in 2021. With bullpens stretched thin due to short stints by starters and by constant pitching changes, managers will often have a non-pitcher mop up a lopsided game.
Astudillo fell behind 3-0 on Yermin Mercedes, one of the White Sox’s best hitters. Traditionally, when a team is ahead by double-digits, a batter will not take advantage of the fact that, with a 3-0 count, the pitcher will try to throw it down the middle with a little less velocity than normal. Instead, a batter will take the pitch.
But Mercedes pounced on Astudillo’s lob (timed at less than 50 miles per hour). The result was a home run.
After the game, La Russa criticized his player for doing so. He called Mercedes “clueless” and said he had missed the “take” sign. La Russa’s comments, in turn, subjected him to renewed complaints that he’s too old school.
There are those who reject the notion that a batter should show any mercy to a pitcher (or in this case a catcher) at any stage of a game. To me, however, what Mercedes did was bush league and, as we will see, risky. He also apparently ignored a sign from his coach. I’m glad that La Russa made the point to his player (who has kicked around in baseball long enough to know better) in no uncertain terms.
This wasn’t the end of the matter, though. The next night, predictably, a Minnesota pitcher threw at (or more precisely, behind) Mercedes’s legs. The umpire ejected the pitcher along with his manager.
Afterwards, La Russa doubled-down on old school, stating, “I don’t have a problem with how the Twins handled that.” He made it clear, however, that if the pitcher had thrown at Mercedes’ head, he would have had a problem.
La Russa’s reaction seems impolitic. Defending an opponent who has thrown at one of your players (even at or near his legs) is a questionable move. La Russa may have risked his relationship with his player and/or others on the team.
However, Tuesday’s incident did reinforce La Russa’s criticism of Mercedes for swinging on 3-0 against Astudillo on Monday. Mercedes being thrown at was an entirely foreseeable consequence of his behavior the night before, and it could have been worse. Thus, even putting sportsmanship to one side, there are pragmatic reasons why what Mercedes did was wrong.
In any case, La Russa once again is under attack from the woke, hipster sports commentariat. And former pitcher CC Sabathia launched an expletive-fill tirade against the White Sox manager. La Russa “shouldn’t be f***ing managing that team,” Sabathia ranted.
Meanwhile, the White Sox are doing quite well. La Russa’s critics point out, correctly, that his team is loaded with talent. But so are the Los Angeles Dodgers, the New York Yankees, and the San Diego Padres. As I type this, the White Sox have the best record of the four teams.
And they are accomplishing this without their two most talented young position players — Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert. The former is probably out for the season after surgery. The latter will be out for a few more months.
It’s also worth noting that Lucas Giolito, Chicago’s star pitcher (originally a Washington National) had this to say after allowing just two hits in eight innings in the series finale against the Twins:
I really love the way we’re going about our business on a daily basis. Last year we got that little taste, and now we want the whole thing.
As usual, winning is magic tonic in the clubhouse.
But La Russa has set things up so that the team might need to win “the whole thing” if he is to keep his job. If the White Sox stumble, the pressure to sack him might become overwhelming.
Maybe this is part of La Russa’s plan — absorb all of the pressure, taking it away from the players. Maybe not.
In either case, it has become quite a high wire act that he finds himself trying to pull off on Chicago’s south side.
