Bob Nightengale produced another installment of Nightwashing on Tuesday morning, in which his preview of the 2023 White Sox largely holds Tony La Russa blameless for the White Sox's fan-murdering .500 season.
Or does it?
It wouldn't be the first time that Nightengale set out to deflect criticism from La Russa, which also serves the purpose of sparing the guy who hired him. When Nightengale broke the story about La Russa officially retiring late in September, he said calling La Russa's return a failure was "unfair," and that even Rick Hahn's first choice of A.J. Hinch wouldn't have been able to make a difference.
But both articles also feature Nightengale undermining his own assertions with accurate descriptions of how events actually played out. These brazen attempts to flatter favored sources in spite of the facts are make an article a Nightwashing, and now I'm starting to get suspicious.
The more of these stories I see, the more I wonder if Nightengale is not a clubby insider, but a secret subversive, a wolf in sheep's clothing.
This version of Nightengale realizes the damage he can do with the access he's gained, but opening fire would sever his lines. Instead, he adopts a Borat-like approach that encourages his subjects' most self-sabotaging impulses, and the material keeps flowing.
What results is a collection of paragraphs that leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Scan the story once, and it reads like a hearty defense. Read every line in order, and then read every line twice more, and the skewing becomes a skewering.
I mean, here's the lede:
Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa was standing by the railing in Chicago White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf’s suite, keeping score, jotting down notes, and acting as if little has changed.
Nightengale immediately lets us know something we need to know: Tony La Russa is not only hanging out with Jerry Reinsdorf, but he's taking notes. Pedro Grifol may be the manager, and Rick Hahn may have loved the way he got a chance to hire his guy, but we still can't trust that the White Sox's chain of command won't strangle itself the first chance it gets.
Now, most people who watched what happen to the White Sox in 2022 would call this a huge mistake, and maybe some White Sox employees are suspicious about this unflattering observation being front and center. Here's where Nightengale pulls the parking break and zooms in the opposite direction to throw them off his scent.
La Russa, 78, continues to battle serious health issues, and undergoes weekly treatments, but has informed only his family and a close friends his exact condition.
Now that he is no longer manager of the White Sox, there has been another huge change in his life.
He can no longer be blamed.
Nightengale then starts ostensibly building a story of a White Sox redemption from players who have been humbled by their hubris. He talks to Joe Kelly and Lance Lynn, both of whom reinforce the notion that those on the field ultimately control their destinies.
Of course, that's what players should say for multiple reasons. Stressing their own (under)performances gives them agency and motivation. Also, anybody who has ever prepared for a job interview knows it's generally ill-advised to slag a former manager while trying to appeal to a new one.
Nightengale doesn't mention this. Instead, he lets them roll, and while each player takes pains to defend the manager, they inadvertently, repeatedly obliterate the way the White Sox were managed in 2022, if they were ever managed to begin with.
Kelly stresses the word "we" referring to the players, but then lists a bunch of things that standard oversight usually corrects:
“It was our fault from the get-go. It was our fault for not playing with such urgency. It was our fault for not holding each other accountable. It was too late when we decided to get going. We had a lot of guys get injured, but everyone gets injured. We kind of slow-played actual baseball. And once we got back into game-speed, we played like we were still rehabbing as a unit.’’
The White Sox had 10 players on the injured list in late June.
“Guys were taking it easy, being cautious, and that was not coming from the training staff or strength coach,’’ Kelly said, “it was us as players not going pedal to the metal. We were running out of time, and then we kind of speeded as fast as we could, but then obviously we couldn’t catch up."
This aligns with what Hahn said during Grifol's introductory press conference last November ...
"Other than [one case of asking a player to withhold effort to avoid exacerbating an injury], we asked the players to keep us updated on what was going on from an injury or fatigue standpoint. But when you are out there, we expect 100% of what you have.”
When asked if that's what he saw from his White Sox, Hahn responded, "I am not sure that message fully got through."
... which was barely veiled poke at La Russa alleging that more than half of the lineup played under a reduced-hustle directive.
Why would a team have such a persistent problem with players blurring the line between limping and lollygagging? It probably didn't help that La Russa himself wasn't willing to admit the toll the 2023 season took on him, which Nightengale let Lynn reveal.
It was clear to veterans like Lance Lynn, who played for La Russa in St. Louis, that La Russa was not himself most of the year. He had little energy. He needed daily naps. His voice was so soft that it was often hard to hear him.
This was not the La Russa anyone knew.
“I love Tony to death,’’ Lynn said, “and you could tell he wasn’t 100% of what he wanted to be. We knew Tony was going through a lot, and tried to be there for him, but you know Tony. He wasn’t going to let us know what was going on. He told us about the heart stuff, but there was more, way more stuff going on. He still won’t tell anybody. But that’s why you love him, he wanted to make it was about our team, not him.
And then Nightengale goes into how much energy and focus the spring camp has under Grifol, who has the energy of somebody who is 25 years younger and has everything to prove.
To sum it all up, La Russa was a shell of himself, leaving players to manage themselves, which they did poorly. Nobody besides Reinsdorf had the authority to replace La Russa, and not only did he refuse to fire La Russa, but La Russa is still in his ear.
Does this confirm our priors? Absolutely. But it's helpful to hear White Sox personnel confirm this on the record so complaints can't be dismissed as uninformed speculation, and because he made a superficial attempt to shield the White Sox brass and La Russa from direct heat, they'll continue to talk to him.
That either makes Nightengale the unlikeliest dissident, or he's stumbled into a horseshoe theory of access journalism so extreme that it resembles service journalism. That's Nightwashing for you.
