Tony La Russa won the World Series with St Louis Cardinals and then retired. He likes to do things his way
In the offbeat, illogical realm of fandom, many more baseball fans disliked Tony La Russa than liked Tony La Russa. That's because he was good, very good, and more often than not, he found a way to beat your team, often, in agonizing fashion. La Russa has retired after 33 seasons, putting up win totals that only two other managers in the history of baseball have topped. Just days after guiding his Cardinals to their 11th World Series title, and his third championship as skipper, La Russa made the call to go out on top after winning his 70th post-season game, also good enough for second all-time behind Joe Torre.
One of the things Tony La Russa was known for was the wildly unorthodox practice of batting the pitcher in the eighth slot, which you were sure he did every now and then, just to mess with you. Another MO was frequently changing pitchers, (he changed a record 75 times this post-season), which you were also sure he did just to mess with you. Most importantly, in the end, La Russa's trademark was winning titles with teams that were not as good as the competition. In 2006, his Cards won just 83 regular season games, collapsing down the stretch, but recovering to defeat the heavily favored Mets in the NLCS and then the Tigers in the World Series. In 2011 he lost his all-star pitcher Adam Wainwright to a season ending injury, watched his closer, Ryan Franklin, implode, saw his team commit the second most errors in the NL, and had pitching that could only be described as middle of the road, and won the World Series in wildly dramatic fashion, after it took over a month of perfect baseball to even get into the playoffs.
La Russa was always loyal to his players, some would argue, to a fault. He vehemently supported Mark McGwire after his infamous Congressional testimony regarding performance enhancing drugs when most of the sports world was roasting the slugger. La Russa managed McGwire in St. Louis when he broke the single season home run record, and was in the dugout with McGwire and Jose Canseco in Oakland while leading the A's to a championship and three pennants. In 2010 McGwire came clean after La Russa made McGwire hitting coach, but the Cards skipper refused to waver in his support. His backing of McGwire was just one reason that La Russa was just about as polarizing a figure as a manager could be.
A text message from a friend that floated in shortly after his retirement announcement read "If I knew La Russa was going to quit if he won I would have been rooting for them the whole time." He wouldn't be alone in that regard, and in fact, even in St. Louis there are still holdouts whose admiration for former Cards manager Whitey Herzog, who won a title and three pennants between 1980 and 1990, eclipses the love for La Russa. You can't argue however that most players loved playing for him. For one, Albert Pujols counts La Russa as one of his best friends, and his departure could have a big effect on whether or not Pujols resigns with the ballclub. Losing one of the greatest managers is tough enough, but add on that highly regarded pitching coach Dave Duncan is considering retirement, and Pujols is now free to go anywhere, and the Cardinals may be in for an earthquake of a shakeup, just days after causing one in the World Series.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/nov/01/tony-la-russa-retire-cardinals
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