Sunday Extra

Fear strikes back

Cardinals manager Tony La Russa searches extensively - maybe even obsessively - for every edge. It has paid off for the Tampa native, who returns to the area this week to face the Rays.

By MARC TOPKIN
Published June 12, 2005

	[Getty Images]
	Tony La Russa wears tinted glasses for night games so opponents can't see his eyes, one of the ways that he tries to gain an advantage, large or small.

ST. LOUIS - Tony La Russa is scared.

Scared more than he's ever been. Scared to death, if you ask him.

This isn't the bad fear, the kind he talks of with disdain, of running from a challenge.

This is the good fear, the kind that makes a 60-year-old man considered one of the best ever at his craft nervous and nauseous almost every night. The kind that makes a man known for his rabid attention to detail crazy that he's going to miss something. The kind that makes a man who has won more than any active manager, and will soon rank third in wins all time, afraid he'll be the reason his team is going to lose.

"This is the fear that motivates you," the St. Louis Cardinals manager said, sitting in his Busch Stadium office, pictures on four walls reflecting his success.

Ultimately, it's the fear makes La Russa who he is. And what he is.

It doesn't matter if it's a mid-May Cardinals game against the Pirates, a World Series game against the Red Sox, or this week's games against the Devil Rays, when La Russa makes his first regular-season appearance in his hometown.

He'll be more prepared than anyone, anticipating everything that could happen. He'll be relentless in his search for any edge that could matter. He'll be resolute in pushing his team, believing that relaxing is never an option.

And, naturally, he'll be worried sick.

"I've always been scared. In fact, I think it's probably worse than ever," La Russa said. "The reason I'm grinding is that I'm worried about it getting away. What you learn is that from the first inning to the last inning, you're thinking, "what if? ... what if? ... what if?'

"Because your responsibility is to put guys in positions to succeed. So you can't wait until the thing hits you in the face and you say, "Ooops, here's a problem.' So you get ready for it."

What he's really scared of, according to Cardinals trainer and longtime friend Barry Weinberg, is simple.

"He'll be mad at me for saying this to you," Weinberg said, "but what he's trying to do is get the team so far ahead that he can't mess it up."

LaRussa is a complex man by any standards, but especially in the typically macho baseball world.

He has a diverse background, including an industrial management degree from USF, a law degree from FSU and membership in the Florida Bar.

He has diverse tastes, a practicing vegetarian who enjoys eating alone in restaurants, reading novels, and living in a hotel during the season.

He has diverse passions, including his daughters' ballets and the Animal Rescue Foundation he lends his name and money to (including all profits from his new book, 3 Nights in August).

But his story started like so many others, a boy growing up in Tampa learning to play the game his father taught him to love.

When the La Russas lived in Ybor City in the late 1940s, in the apartment above the service station near 12th and Columbus Drive, young Tony would spend entire days playing ball at Cuscaden Park. When the hours his father, Anthony, put in on his dairy route grew too long, La Russa would drag his mother into the adjacent rock-strewn alley and have her roll him balls.

After the family moved to West Tampa, it was much the same at MacFarlane Park, learning the fundamentals from playground coaches and being inspired by Hall of Famer Al Lopez.

"We played some kind of game all day long," La Russa said. "We didn't go to the beach, we didn't go to the pool, we didn't go fishing."

He moved on to star at Jefferson High, a middle infielder good enough to sign with the Kansas City A's the night of his 1962 graduation. He also played on some tremendous youth league teams, including a 1961 American Legion Post 248 team that remarkably included two other future major leaguers - Ken Suarez and Devil Rays manager Lou Piniella.

With all La Russa has done on the field - playing parts of six seasons in the majors, 10 others in the minors and managing for 27 more - he says two of his biggest disappointments are rooted in Tampa.

Both, naturally, involve losing.

Jefferson had a chance to do something in the state tournament La Russa's senior year, but he was declared ineligible for playing in a semipro league. And the Post 248 team had a good shot at the nationals, but blew a lead in the state final when Piniella called off La Russa and misplayed a fly ball.

"That really disappointed the neighborhood," La Russa said.

Though La Russa moved to the San Francisco area in the late 1980s, he is still loyal to his Tampa roots. He worked on his USF degree over seven offseasons, spending mornings in class and afternoons in instructional league, then doing it the other way around during spring training.

Once he realized he wasn't going to make it as a big-league player, he was just as dedicated at FSU's law school, taking classes for two semesters and taking two off for years, finding Triple-A jobs for the summer, sometimes as a player-coach.

If managing hadn't worked out, La Russa very well could be a lawyer with a downtown Tampa firm right now.

"I'd be a lawyer someplace," he said. "I like to read. Problem-solving is kind of interesting. It would have to be something competitive, something in the courtroom."

His parents have both passed away, though his sister, Eva, still lives in the Tampa area, along with "a whole crew of aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews." He is looking forward to seeing them this week, with games Friday-Sunday at Tropicana Field.

Family is important to La Russa, yet it is also one of his biggest personal failings.

Since he took the Cardinals job in 1996, his wife, Elaine, and two daughters have remained in California while he spends his springs in Florida and summers (and some falls) in St. Louis before rejoining them in the winter. It is an odd arrangement, one that has raised eyebrows, caused La Russa to admit some mistakes, and illustrates the toll his obsession with success has taken.

"I think it's real dramatic with them there and me here, but in Oakland, when I was there, it was pretty much the same," he said. "It's like that sign in our house says: "We interrupt this marriage to bring you the baseball season.'

"When you're going to the park early, and half the time you're on the road, what happens to a lot of people is that you get into it and you kind of get glazed over even when you're home, thinking about who you're going to pitch and what's going to happen."

In the book, which is extremely candid for a usually guarded man, La Russa acknowledges a decision for which he has never forgiven himself.

The White Sox were off to a rough start in 1983 when Elaine, parenting a 31/2-year-old and a toddler alone, called from Florida to say she had pneumonia and needed to be hospitalized. Rather than be a husband and a father, La Russa felt it was more important to be a manager and asked his sister to take care of the kids.

"One of the points of the book is that there's a certain commitment I think everyone needs to make if you want to have some special success," La Russa said. "But there is a line that you don't have to cross to make it obsessive to the detriment of your family. And I crossed that line."

La Russa didn't expect to be here.

He started managing almost accidentally, a player-coach job at Triple-A New Orleans turning into his first shot at being in charge when the manager left after being diagnosed with cancer.

The experience was intriguing enough that he decided being a lawyer could wait. He sent out some letters, the White Sox gave him a job managing at Double-A Knoxville in 1978 and things started happening quickly.

The major-league staff was shuffled at midseason, and he was brought up to coach first base. He managed that winter in the Dominican Republic, then started the next year at Triple-A Iowa.

On Aug. 2, 1979, Bill Veeck and Roland Hemond gave him the big-league job. He was 34, he'd played all of 132 games in the majors (with a .199 career average) and he wasn't sure if he could do it. And certainly not for nearly 30 years.

"I would have bet just about everything I had those first years in Chicago this was just a temporary get-it-out-of-your system thing," La Russa said. "Most times, when you don't have credentials - I was a bad player, I had parts of two minor-league years managing and one winter - you struggle and nobody hears from you again. And here it is all those years later.

"Hard to believe."

He learned constantly, and eventually "I started to cut myself some slack." He'd ask questions incessantly, analyze every criticism, treasure every piece of advice and compliment - especially from the veteran baseball men he respected like Sparky Anderson, Billy Martin and Chuck Tanner.

But one of the reasons La Russa has lasted so long, and won so much, is that he never felt he was good at it.

"When he first came up, he was a young guy and probably a lot of people thought, "How'd this guy get a major-league managing job,' " said Cardinals general manager Walt Jocketty, who first worked with La Russa in Iowa in the '70s. "I think he was always dealing with a chip on his shoulder, that he always felt he had to prove himself. And he's still that way today."

La Russa acknowledges that - after more than 4,000 games, 10 division titles, four pennants and one World Series - he's a more experienced manager.

But he won't admit that he's any better.

"You know what makes a better manager? Better players," La Russa said. "If there's a break a manager catches that I haven't caught, I challenge you to find it. I've caught every possible break you can possibly catch. That's the biggest reason I don't get too carried away with career wins.

"I went to three ideal situations. Every place I went - Chicago, Oakland and St. Louis - (there was good) ownership, front office, players. If you are in situations like that, you are going to get wins.

"Lou's a good example. He does it in Seattle and he goes to Tampa Bay and they're struggling. It's not about managing, it's about players."

La Russa has always done things a little differently.

He'll try things considered innovative - or insane - like batting his pitcher eighth. He'll get so competitive that he'll end up on the field jawing with an opposing manager. He'll rely so heavily on statistical data and matchups - though he can barely use a computer - that some critics say he has no feel for the game.

Two things set him apart - excessive preparation before the game and incredible intensity during the entire nine innings.

No lead is safe, no decision can be made casually, every worst-case scenario must be anticipated, nothing can be taken for granted. The Cardinals have the best record in the National League and a comfortable division lead, and La Russa insists - his three-year contract extension be damned - that he's worried he'll be fired if they don't win.

"He's relentless," Jocketty said. "I really don't know how he does it sometimes."

"There's never a day when he's not 100 percent ready to play the game," said Dave Duncan, his longtime pitching coach. "Nothing gets by him. It's amazing."

La Russa's trademark is to search for any, and every, advantage. He'll go against "the book" to get what he considers a favorable matchup. He'll shift his outfielders' positioning from pitch to pitch during an at-bat. He switched to tinted glasses for night games so opponents can't see his eyes.

"He's always looking for an edge, even the tiniest edge possible," said Eduardo Perez, who came to the Rays from the Cardinals. "The tricky part is if you don't play for him, you don't care much for him."

But when you do, you have no choice but to care a lot. La Russa has changed over the years, becoming more open and even friendly with his players, learning to not let small things bother him.

But he is no less demanding, or passionate, about winning.

"As a player, it makes you feel real good when a manager is managing just as hard as you are playing," reliever Ray King said. "There are days when you see him coming off the field looking like he just got through playing nine innings. And that says a lot."

La Russa would be scared to have it any other way.

[Last modified June 12, 2005, 00:39:15]