Genius at Work

The World Series starts tonight, and some baseball fans are dreading the match-up between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Texas Rangers. Nothing against the teams, but the fact that neither team, during their League Championship Series, had a pitcher make a quality start (the Rangers didn't even have a starter who won a game). This means the game will be in the hands of the managers early and often, with numerous pitching changes. And when one of the managers is Tony LaRussa, that can be painful.

LaRussa, without too much argument, is the greatest manager of the last fifty years. He has now won pennants in four different decades, which only John McGraw and Connie Mack have done. He is only 35 wins behind McGraw for second place on the all-time list (Mack is about 1,000 ahead of McGraw), so barring a sudden retirement or a dismal season, he will pass that mark next year. He is only one of two managers (Sparky Anderson is the other) to win World Series in both leagues. Following the retirement of Jerry Sloan from the Utah Jazz, LaRussa's tenure with the St. Louis Cardinals is now the longest of any head coach in the four North American sports leagues.

Yet many find LaRussa insufferable. He is deified by many writers. Buzz Bissinger wrote an entire book about a three-game series he managed. He's part of a coterie of coaches, including Bill Parcells and Bobby Knight, that seem to hang together because they are elite (of course, I don't know that for sure. Maybe it's their shared love of stamp collecting). LaRussa also has a law degree.

He stands in the dugout during games, at times fiddling with his lip, looking at the field as if it were a chessboard. Baseball fans like to think of their game as having a large intellectual component, and it is often something of a chess match, but when a manager reminds them of that, somehow it rankles. LaRussa, some think, imagines himself the Bobby Fischer of baseball, with or without the insanity.

There is evidence to back this up. It was LaRussa who batted his pitcher eighth. He has used 4.9 relievers a game, which is either a testament to a bad pitching staff or a manager who preaches match-ups. Compare this to Jim Leyland (a friend of his), who seems to throw a reliever out there and damn the torpedoes.

This series will be all about bullpens, and how they fare against the big sluggers. The Texas line-up is inexhaustibly powerful, with Nelson Cruz setting a record for home runs in a seven-game post-season series. On the Cardinals side, the Rangers will have to deal with Albert Pujols and the suddenly hot David Freese, but it seems to me that Texas' line-up is more consistently dangerous.

Still, it's hard to count out the Cardinals. At this time of year a team can get hot and roll right through the post-season. However, many times those types of teams, whether they be the '06 Tigers or the '07 Rockies, finally hit a wall. That's why, despite LaRussa, I'm going to pick the Rangers in six. And, despite their being George W. Bush's favorite team, I'm going to root for them.

By the way, Tony LaRussa's greatest achievement is his daughter, Bianca, who is a Raiders cheerleader. She's pictured below.