Tony LaRussa's quiet departure

---

I’m kind of glad my father is dead.

This is not a Jennette McCurdy sort of thing. That former child actor published the hot memoir of the summer, I’m Glad My Mother Is Dead, about her abusive stage mother. 

I have nothing against my father. I’m just appreciative he isn’t around to see what’s going on with the White Sox, the team that made his life more bearable.

Sometimes. Many times, the Sox made his life worse. Let’s be realistic.

Dad, like club owner Jerry Reinsdorf, believed in loyalty. “You will be judged by the way you treat your employees,” Dad once said. Neither of us had any employees at the time, but I thought it was an admirable notion, anyway.

Famously, prior to the 2021 season, Reinsdorf rehired Tony LaRussa, the manager he said he regretted allowing to be fired in 1986. LaRussa, then 76, a Hall of Fame manager, three-time world champion and second-winningest manager ever, had not managed for a decade when Reinsdorf brought him back.

It was a very odd hire, but not unreasonable on its face. No one could possibly find a manager with more bona fides, even if they were hard to remember.

One of several strange aspects of hiring LaRussa was the widely-accepted premise that Reinsdorf did it partly to make up for the termination. That was not entirely sensible, since La Russa had been out of work a grand total of three weeks in 1986 before he was hired to manage the Athletics. He went on to have an enviable career in the 35 intervening years.

His first season back in Chicago was not bad. The White Sox finished first in the weakling Central Division, though the team quickly collapsed in the playoffs. 

It was admirably stocked with talent, but didn’t look like a championship squad. To get anywhere in the post-season, they would have had to play over their heads. They didn’t.

They got much worse in 2022, despite attempts to improve the roster. They have a hard time winning as many as they lose. They became less diligent in conditioning, resulting in a raft of soft-tissue injuries. Several players have the manager’s permission not to run plays out to try to save their flaccid muscles. They hit barely any homers and lead the league in singles. And they stopped having fun. 

So did the fans. The White Sox are a hard bunch to watch. They’re not very clutch, and they make dopey mistakes.

These are all things that a baseball manager has a good chance of remedying. LaRussa has not been the tonic they need.

Not since Don Gutteridge in 1970 has a White Sox team seemed so ineffectually managed. 

The White Sox owner has remained loyal to the frowny-faced LaRussa, which is fine. But in being cool to one rich, famous guy, Reinsdorf seems genuinely disloyal to literally millions of people who support him and his team.

I suspect an important reason Reinsdorf brought back LaRussa was because he wanted to show what a smart baseball man he really is, despite what happened in 1986. “Look who agreed to come back to our great organization!” Firing LaRussa again might make a very different point. 

There’s pressure to let LaRussa go, though Reinsdorf doesn’t seem to respond to things like chants of “Fire Tony” and the team being booed off its home field.

Tuesday, the Sox announced that LaRussa would miss that night’s game because of an unnamed health issue, though the manager was at the ballpark 50 minutes before the game, looking a little cheerier than usual. He’s still not back, getting medical tests in Phoenix. 

It’s possible the announcement is a run-up to a face-saving step away from the job for LaRussa. It’s possible it’s not.

Bench coach Miguel Cairo is now acting manager. LaRussa could come back sooner or later or not at all. He’s probably not going to be much more successful unless he has a remarkable Arizona epiphany.

Before he died in 2004, my father saw the White Sox rehire two other managers out of retirement, Al Lopez and Paul Richards. Neither did well. Dad seemed to have an affection for both, but saw no compelling reason to hand them such responsibility when they should be expected to be watching games from their sofas, not from the dugout.

He had the same attitude toward this development as he did toward what he considered the arcane fact of every team’s home field having wildly different dimensions. 

“What kind of a baby game is this?”