Why Hate La Russa?

Folks, I’ll admit it. I am an unabashed, unashamed, unapologetic Tony La Russa guy. No manager in the game today pays as much attention to detail as La Russa. I have never seen a game where Tony has looked even remotely passive. You can sense the fierce passion he has for the game just by watching his mannerisms. How many big league managers can honestly tell you that they’ll lose sleep over a loss in the 9th inning of an exhibition game? 

During La Russa’s tenure in St. Louis, we have seen the Cardinals go from a laughing stock to a perennial contender. We’ve seen the Cardinals go to the playoffs seven times in 13 seasons, capturing two National League Pennants and their first World Championship since Reagan’s first term.

So why then do so many Cardinals fans still hate this guy? To try to figure that out, we’ll have to go back to the beginning.

When La Russa first came to St. Louis before the 1996 season, there were some honest concerns from Cardinals fans. Many wondered how he would adjust to the National League. Others had a hard time grasping his blasphemy of making Royce Clayton, not Ozzie Smith, the regular shortstop. Plenty of others were still lamenting the long-since passed departure of Whitey Herzog. Whatever reasons they had, suffice it to say that La Russa was welcomed with less than open arms.

The 1996 season was a memorable one for Cardinals fans, myself included. It was the rebirth of a perpetually hapless franchise and its formerly astroturf clad stadium. It saw a team with a cast of talented youngsters, has-beens, reclamation projects and aged stars grab a playoff spot for the first time since 1987. In the Division Series they swept a Padres team that had been clearly better than them all season long. In the League Championship Series, the Cardinals went up three games to one against the Atlanta Braves before falling apart at the seams.

Many fans called for La Russa’s head after that NLCS collapse, citing the way he handled his pitching staff over the final three games. While it’s true that La Russa probably should have started Andy Benes instead of Donovan Osborne in Game Seven, there are some factors that many fans forget all too quickly. How many of you remember that Andy Benes actually did pitch during Game Seven?  In four and a third innings of relief Benes gave up five hits and four earned runs. That’s not exactly what you would hope to get out of your ace, even if it is in relief.

Fans also seem to forget that the Braves were a vastly superior team to the Cardinals in 1996. The Cardinals won only 88 games that year. That’s only two more wins than this year’s incarnation of the Cardinals that finished fourth in the NL Central, and only one more victory than the 1993 squad that finished third. Not exactly what I would call a superpower. In fact, the Cardinals probably wouldn’t have even made it to the NLCS had it not been for the old Division Series format in which the team with the worse record had the first two games at home.

By any standard the 1996 Cardinals were a remarkable story. A team that probably shouldn’t have even been in contention came within one win of the World Series. But of course once you get a taste of winning, you crave it. With the addition of Delino DeShields and the maturation of Alan Benes there was plenty of hope for the Cardinals coming into 1997.

Spring training ended that year with Tony La Russa making what I consider to be his biggest baseball mistake ever. He guaranteed the Cardinals would win the National League Central. It didn’t happen. Not only did the Cardinals get poor years from veterans like Ron Gant and Gary Gaetti, but Brian Jordan couldn’t stay healthy. The bullpen was a joke and the starting rotation struggled. The team finished a dismal 73-89 and fans pinned the blame squarely on La Russa. Had it not been for the mid-season acquisition of Mark McGwire taking focus off of a terrible team, fans might have burned La Russa at the stake.

So now Tony had two big strikes against him. Choking in the 1996 NLCS and a broken promise of a repeat division championship left him with nowhere to go but up, right? Well, the 1998 season didn’t make things any better when La Russa experimented with the pitcher batting 8th during the second half of the season. These same fans that had so happily accepted Whitey Herzog’s unconventional ways now damned La Russa for his. Don’t forget, Herzog used to have his pitchers go to right field while another pitcher would come out of the bullpen to face one batter. After that batter was faced, the pitcher was brought back in from right field to pitch. But none of that seemed to matter because La Russa wasn’t Whitey Herzog.

1999 saw a Cardinals team that could hit home runs almost as fast as their pitching staff could give them up. The only real highlights of the season were Mark McGwire hitting his 500th career home run and Jose Jimenez throwing a no-hitter against the Diamondbacks. In all fairness to La Russa, 1998 and 1999 saw the Cardinals bitten by the injury bug more often than they had a right to.

In 2000, the Cardinals finally won a second NL Central crown under La Russa. In the Division Series against the Braves, La Russa opted to start rookie Rick Ankiel in lieu of ace Darryl Kile in game one. During the third inning of that game Ankiel suffered one of the worst mental breakdowns in baseball history. He couldn’t find anything but the backstop, and didn’t make it through the inning. Fans immediately jumped on La Russa for letting a rookie start such a high pressured game. To compound the problem, Ankiel’s troubles continued in the NLCS and the Cardinals fell rather meekly to the Mets. I wonder what the fans reaction would have been had Ankiel not had his meltdown?

More troubles followed:

• An early exit from the playoffs in 2001.
• The inability to ‘win the big one’ in honor of fallen pitcher Darryl Kile and broadcaster Jack Buck in 2002.
• Collapsing late in the season and missing the playoffs altogether in 2003.

La Russa continued to be an outsider in the city he had called his baseball home for 8 seasons. Not even a remarkable 2004 season in which a Cardinals team that many felt would finish no higher than third in their division made it to the World Series could win over all the fans. The World Series appearance helped Tony to some degree, but it still wasn’t overwhelming.

I would argue that it was not until La Russa led an old, battered but resilient 2006 Cardinals team to a World Championship that his approval rating broke the 50 percent barrier. That was only temporary though, as an ill-timed DUI arrest in March of 2007 had holier-than-thous crying in agony.

Still to this day, many fans are calling for the end of the La Russa era. There was a large outcry of dissatisfaction when the Cardinals resigned La Russa for 2 more years after the 2007 season. Many Cardinals fans are hoping that 2009 will be Tony’s last at the helm of their beloved Cardinals, and there are some signs that they might get their wish.

La Russa isn’t getting any younger, and he has made it clear that St. Louis is his last managerial stop. Depending on how the Cardinals fare in 2009, it is possible that La Russa will choose not to go through a rebuilding phase with the club and will slide into a front-office position with another team.

Do Cardinals fans realize what they’ll be missing when Tony finally does hang it up? They will no longer be led by the man with the most career managerial wins in team history and the third most all time. Gone will be one of only two men in the history of the game to manage a World Series winner in both leagues. But most important of all, gone will be a sure-fire first ballot hall of fame manager. Forget what you think about La Russa’s methods and his unorthodox style. He quite simply gets the job done.

When La Russa does get inducted into Cooperstown he will most certainly be wearing a Cardinals cap. On that day many things will be said about La Russa and the great managers in Cardinals history. No matter what you say about guys like Billy Southworth, Red Schoendienst and even Whitey Herzog, this is for certain: They’re no Tony La Russa.