You heard it here first: It sucks that the White Sox failed to win the World Series this year.
Buried in the pile of benefits of your favorite team winning just its fourth-ever championship, it was the only way to peacefully resolve the Tony La Russa hiring. Those who celebrated La Russa's return could take a victory lap, and just about everybody who railed against the hiring would be too busy celebrating to care about that particular scoreboard.
And then La Russa might decide to retire. Having passed John McGraw for sole ownership of second place on the all-time managerial wins list, and having won a fourth ring for the franchise that gave him his start in the field, there'd really be no more worlds to conquer.
Alas, unfinished business remains, and because La Russa is 1) a White Sox manager and 2) a favorite of Jerry Reinsdorf's, everybody involved can't help but chart the future of the dugout in the most convoluted fashion. La Russa made it sound like an open question after the game ...
“You don’t want to come back [just] because you got a contract,” he said. “I would just leave if they don’t want you back.
“If they say yes, then you ask the players. You know? They should choose whom they want to manage.”
We’re to believe the Sox players can essentially fire La Russa?
“If the players don’t want you,” he said, “then you walk away.”
... and if he were fishing for compliments, then he caught his limit. José Abreu praised him after the Game 4 loss, and Tim Anderson went even further:
“Huge impact,” said Anderson of La Russa. “Everybody thought we weren't going to get along, but we were talking behind the scenes the whole time. For him, the players come first, and he makes that known. We're one big family, but he did a great job coming in and being a part of what we're trying to do.
“I couldn't be more happy with what he did. The relationship was great, overall, with the players. Everybody was just getting along with him. He came in and did what he was supposed to do, and hopefully he can step right back in and continue to push us next year and make these decisions that he did. I was very pleased with how he handled it.”
With the Cardinals firing Mike Shildt on Thursday, one could supposedly connect some dots between La Russa's uncertain future in Chicago, given that the Cardinals haven't been able to find a La Russa replacement who can stick. But for the second time in as many days, Bob Nightengale came in to deliver word from on high.
Nightengale might have to report to the principal's office for revealing the contract length of a White Sox manager. Rick Hahn has refused to do so for the last three hires for reasons that escape everybody. Perhaps it's because it risks inviting accountability above the player ranks?
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Given that I just wrote a lot of words about some La Russa managerial shortcomings in the ALDS less than a week ago, I'm not in any rush to get back into a nuts-and-bolts discussion of his decision-making. Perhaps there will be an opening if and when the White Sox announce coaching staff changes, or a lack thereof.
But seeing La Russa try to get himself ejected in Game 4 of the ALDS brought to mind Rick Renteria getting booted three times over a five-game stretch late last year, and how it wasn't what you wanted to see from a guy managing under pressure for the first time in his five years on the job.
La Russa was heated for Kendall Graveman's plunking of José Abreu in the top of the ninth inning. Looking at the sequence without bringing the context into it, and it appeared to be yet another case of a pitcher being a little too comfortable missing well inside on Abreu, but the seventh pitch generally isn't the time it's done. Now, add in Ryan Tepera's insinuation about the Astros cheating, the crowd's raucous applause of a Jose Altuve HBP earlier in the game, and the delight the Astros took in running up the score every other way, and you can't exactly rule out intent.
Anyway, La Russa used his postgame session to lecture the Astros ...
"I only care about sportsmanship so far. And I have a limit," La Russa told reporters. "They beat us. They played better. We're disappointed. That was intentional. I don't understand why. I don't understand how they got away with it." [...]
"It will be a good test of the character and credibility," La Russa said. "They did hit him intentionally. I'll be really curious. They should have the guts to admit that they did it, why they did it."
... which would be fine, except this is the same guy who couldn't detect intent when Tyler Duffey threw at Yermín Mercedes earlier in the season.
La Russa spent the entire postseason being an unreliable narrator. The guy who said "I don't believe in gamesmanship" pretended his Game 1 starter was open to debate when Lance Lynn said he was informed the week before. He waited until the last possible moment in submitting the first lineup of the series, as if Abreu would be kept out of an ALDS game when healthy. He listed Michael Kopech as the only pitcher unavailable for Game 4, then used him first out of the bullpen.
(I half-believed him on Kopech, because he wasn't all that effective with his first 47 pitches in Game 3, and so he didn't seem like a great bet to be meaningfully better two days later. I didn't think he'd be out of the mix entirely, but only if the choices came down to him or Reynaldo López.)
La Russa's shameless blend of hypocrisy and sanctimony is why the entire NL Central couldn't stand his Cardinals in the aughts, although his complete disregard for any framing of events besides his own is a goofy byproduct of what's made him a successful manager. He doesn't care how he comes across if it advances his goals, especially to people outside of his chain of command. With the umpires issuing warnings to both dugouts after Graveman's HBP of Abreu, perhaps La Russa was just irritated that the Astros worked the refs better than he did.
By and large, his players seem to respond to Tony La Russa at his Tony La Russest, but it's the kind of thing that exacerbates the bitterness of defeat. All that sleight of hand, and they still gave up 31 runs over four games, and La Russa capped it off by grousing about honor.
Over the course of the season, there seemed to be an inverse relationship between what White Sox fans thought of La Russa and how closely La Russa was living up his reputation. All the problems over the first two months suggested he was out of touch. The ease with which the White Sox took the AL Central, and the moments where La Russa reflected the looseness of his clubhouse, forced even the chilliest fans to thaw a little.
As La Russa's return to the White Sox becomes more than a one-year attempt to rewrite the past, I'm curious about whether a second season is going to have a more La Russa feel to it. It could be fine if you only care about the results -- the Sox's bigger needs involve the roster -- but if you want other people to like the White Sox as much as you do, precedent says La Russa's particular mark on a team makes it a much harder sell.
(Photo by Denny Medley/USA TODAY Sports)
