Tony La Russa does not, in fact, represent everything that is wrong with baseball.
Jerry Reinsdorf, the man who hired La Russa represents that. This is on him.
And “this” is a lot more than La Russa’s undermining of a young Chicago White Sox team. Chicago, fresh off a transformational playoff season and full of generational talent, is managed by a man who’s stuck in the wrong decade and talks out of both sides of his mouth.
“This” is a sport that’s too infatuated with its segregationist past and is willing to invent, spread and perpetuate any lies it can to protect the membership in its exclusive, conservative, old white man’s club.
Last week’s entire Yermin Mercedes 3-0-pitch-swinging brouhaha (a throwback term entirely fitting in this context) was the loudest reminder that no matter how much baseball and the 21st century want to be best pals, the rulers of the sport will continue protecting it from those not like them.
Watching La Russa not only invoke an invisible rulebook but enable the opposing team to help him put a young Latino star in his place, was a microcosm of a sport that would rather pander to the worst elements of its fan base than give air to the next several generations of people who love it and hope that, this time, it loves them back.
Yet La Russa would not be that personification of a game compelled to run full-speed backwards had Reinsdorf not put him in position to be.
La Russa’s only place in baseball in 2021 should have been in history. Baseball was just fine with him retired and the Yermin Mercedeses and Tim Andersons doing what they do on the field for the White Sox. They were all where they needed to be. Only the sluggish, regressive dinosaurs scattered across the land – the ones who give themselves more grace than they deserve by labeling themselves “old school”, “traditionalists” or “purists” – had a grievance with the baseball of today. They wanted the “old game back” and thought that what this millennium needed was the 1983 Manager of the Year.
Reinsdorf is one of those dinosaurs – the T-rex, actually. He’s not just one of the regressives.
He’s the HRIC.
Jerry Reinsdorf- Head Regressive In Charge
There’s nothing pure about Reinsdorf, his preferences or his motives. He operates a major league club through the ideals of the so-called purists and genuflects to their beliefs.
Reinsdorf is the gatekeeper of all gatekeepers. He can hand over his talented team to anyone he approves of and no one can tell him not to.
Last winter, Reinsdorf decided that Rick Renteria was not the manager to finish the climb from their 100-loss 2018 season. Maybe he wasn’t the one to take the Sox to the top but Reinsdorf decided that 76-year-old La Russa was. 10 years after his last managerial job, six years after entering the Hall of Fame, and 35 years after he had fired him. He had always said he had grown to regret pulling the plug on him. He believed this would right a past wrong.
In his mind, he believed that the 1980s mindset, beliefs and demeanor of La Russa are what the 2020s needed.
La Russa already had a DUI on his resume along with all those World Series trophies. On the day before Reinsdorf hired him, another DUI case from an incident eight months earlier was filed. Yet Reinsdorf obviously didn’t believe that 2020s Tony La Russa needed any adjusting.
Last week, after Mercedes’ “egregious” violation of baseball etiquette by doing nothing more than his job, La Russa showed his true colors.
“He made a mistake,” said La Russa. “There will be a consequence he has to endure here within our family.”
La Russa really found the gall to speak of “family” and “consequences” knowing that he wouldn’t be a manager at that moment if “consequences” mattered.
Reinsdorf and La Russa are family. He welcomed La Russa back into the family without consequences. Mercedes? He apparently was only there conditionally. And launching a titanic home run that everybody would remember long after the circumstances didn’t assure his membership.
Reinsdorf and La Russa stamped that application.
Oh, there is a network of others guarding that entrance. Two of the older members of the Chicago baseball beat corps, Phil Rogers and Rick Morrissey, stood up to defend the two patriarchs against the backlash coming from everyone that likes baseball that’s not beholden to the 1920s.
“Both La Russa and Reinsdorf are easy targets for criticism. There’s an age bias in the media and among younger fans that works against them, along with an almost daily narrative that drives discussion,’’ grumbled Rogers in a Forbes.com column, positioning Reinsdorf and La Russa as victims.
“It’s easy to bash him but Reinsdorf isn’t listening. Trust me on that,” added Rogers. “The owner couldn’t care less about how his manager reacts to a pitcher swinging at a 3-0 pitch from a utility player. He’ll judge La Russa after summer has turned to fall.’’
That’s one problem. The other is thinking everybody else is the problem.
Then there was this from Morrissey in the Chicago Sun-Times, which can be classified as a baseball “Shut Up and Dribble” moment.
“There’s no way to say this without offending today’s incredibly sensitive athletes, so, oh, well: How did we get here, to Wimpyville?”
Oh, these kids today, don’t they know that when the manager says “jump,’’ they’re only allowed to answer, “how high?”
It was fascinating to watch the dinosaurs stretch their necks and bellow to the mountaintops. With one significant exception- Reinsdorf himself.
Of course, he doesn’t have to as he’s got plenty to speak for him. La Russa’s hiring spoke volumes. The flexing of the “unwritten rules” by the man who struggles to obey the written ones spoke loudly for him, too.
This is the manager, team, sport and gatekeepers he wanted. The players of today, the rules that govern them, and the fans that are drawn to it for no other reason than it’s not rooted in the nonsense that governed it for too long before, all stand outside of the velvet ropes the Reinsdorfs of the world erect.
If Reinsdorf wanted to stand up for his players and the way they play, wanted to keep them out of harm’s way from opposing pitchers, wanted to satisfy the fans that make him rich enough to own two franchises in major sports leagues in Chicago, and wanted a manager that helped the team grow toward greatness instead of one that preached and lectured to them about the old days of McGwire and Canseco, he would.
But he didn’t. La Russa is his guy and they’re running this sport.
Reinsdorf, who also owns the Chicago Bulls, has sworn an oath of loyalty to the manager with one playoff appearance for him four decades ago. As “The Last Dance” documentary reminded the world, he had a few magnitudes less patience with, and loyalty to, people like Phil Jackson, and Scottie Pippen, and Michael Jordan.
Despite the six championships, Phil, Scottie, and Michael had to go when their time was up and when Reinsdorf had had enough and was ready to move on.
As for Tony La Russa, who predates them all and has baggage stacked twice as high? It’s welcome back and let’s remind everyone of where they belong.
