The Chris Moeller Archives

Tony's influence

Tony LaRussa's "Don Tony/godfather" act is beginning to wear thin. Most St. Louis sports media officials see through his public criticism of the Players Association as the usual misdirection strategy that it probably is, but that doesn't mean that his tirades of increasing frequency don't get tiresome, or that it's the best course of action for the team.

If you're not up to speed, the Cardinals manager criticized the union this week (in some of the strongest language possible) for supposedly forcing Albert Pujols to chase "the most money, the most money, the most money" in negotiations with the team. In other words, the best player in baseball has decided he will not be giving the Cardinals a "hometown discount," and LaRussa either believes what's actually coming out of his mouth or he's trying to protect his star player from fan anger by redirecting the blame.

Forget for a moment what his manager's comments imply about Albert Pujols' susceptibility to being led around by the nose, it's a wild, completely unsubstantiated accusation against the union, one they deny, and also frankly, exactly the type of reason players need a union to look out for them. Some Cardinals fans probably believe that LaRussa, as a field manager and former ballplayer himself, is a middle-ground representative between his players and his bosses. He's not. He's a team employee and arguably it's most recognizable spokesman at any level. He's been a field manager since the late '70s, since even before the first protracted labor strike in 1981.

Baseball history would have been a little different if MLBPA director Marvin Miller had accepted a young ballplayer's request for a job with the association in 1977. Instead of using his law degree and baseball background for a career in the labor area of the industry, LaRussa became the third-winningest and second-losingest manager in the history of the game. He's also been, coincidentally, the highest-paid manager in the game during much of his 15-year tenure with the Cardinals. You would probably get more of an argument from your average baseball fan if you called LaRussa the best manager in the game than if you called Pujols its best player. It's also a little hard to believe that escalating player salaries haven't had at least some impact on the ability of a baseball manager to earn $3 million a year in salary, as LaRussa receives. Isn't this an example of the proverbial rising tide lifting all boats? LaRussa, it should be noted, also once left the Oakland Athletics as a free agent manager.

As with the Ozzie Smith and Scott Rolen personality-clash flare-ups in the past, LaRussa just starts spewing when he feels cornered by a line of questioning he doesn't like. Early Tuesday, the manager accused the union of "not just arm-twisting" in the Pujols negotiations, but "dropping an anvil on your back through the roof of your house." Yet he admitted simultaneously that he had no evidence to back his claim of interference or to explain the use of that unusual sentence. He was quoted as calling these phantom union tactics "bullshit," but then on Wednesday, he said, confusingly, that he "doesn't second-guess the union." So Tony doesn't have any evidence that the union is doing what he's accusing them of, but it made sense to him that they would be doing it after he "talked with some of (the Cardinals') veteran coaches," so he's going to call bullshit on them. Have I got all of that right?

Similar to his style of managerial maneuvering, the Tony Rules only have to make sense to Tony. At the beginning of the week, he cautioned Albert's teammates (and fellow union members) against commenting to reporters about the contract situation, which would be adding to the "distraction," but then he proceeds to make the most virulent anti-union comments that anybody can remember while he has nothing to back up his claims besides empty conjecture.

What a union is responsible for doing, above all, is educating its members, and fortunately, that's what Pujols' union representatives on the Cardinals, Kyle McClellan and Adam Wainwright, were doing on Tuesday. They both provided brief comments to the media, aired on ESPN, that outlined the union's responsibilities while deflecting from the details of Albert's specific case. Even as teammates, with a rooting interest in Pujols staying with the Cardinals, it was pretty clear they both had his back this week-- without either having to resort to criticism of his representation or insulting his ability to think and act for himself.

LaRussa is not the first baseball manager who has had a star player facing difficult contract negotiations, and he won't be the last. This is part of the business. He's just one of the very few who has felt the need to inject himself smack dab into the middle of it, either to "protect" all parties involved, or simply to run his mouth. But the claims of impartiality on his part are bogus. For one of Pujols' bosses to refer disparagingly to "powerful forces" acting within the union and even within Pujols' representation, and then to inject his own forceful presence into the equation, is the height of hypocrisy.

What should be so demoralizing for Cardinals fans about the tack LaRussa is taking is the indication, at least from my perspective, that it's a first step in assigning unfocused blame if the Cardinals fail to get Pujols signed next fall. There are already reports that the Cardinals' best offer to Pujols this month was not only well short of the 10 year, $300 million total package that's been rumored to be what Pujols' seeks, but less perhaps than even the 5 year, $125 million deal Ryan Howard signed with Philadelphia last year. And Ryan Howard is not Albert Pujols.

Never forget that the Cardinals chairman is Bill DeWitt Jr. If you're not familiar, that's an old-school baseball family we're talking about there with that surname. Dewitt's father started with the Cardinals in 1916 under Branch Rickey, and served as an executive with one team or another until 1981. Bill Junior, himself, was with both the Reds and Rangers before buying the Cardinals with a group of his prep school pals in 1995. The DeWitt men are pre-divisional play. They're pre-expansion. Most significantly, they're pre-Marvin Miller. You can bet that it still means something to a DeWitt to have to pay out a big contract like this one that's being sought by Pujols. Forget the union trying to "set a new bar." For an old school Lord of the Baseball Realm like Bill DeWitt, "setting a new bar" on players' salaries would be an insult to his personal pride and to his reputation within the club owners' fraternity. It would be a virtual slap in the face to the tradition of front office paternalism that defines who these guys are as men.

Yes, Stan the Man retired as a Cardinal, as any proud Redbird Rooter will quickly want to tell you, but a dried-up Dizzy Dean was sold to the Cubs in 1938, and Joe Medwick pawned off to Brooklyn in '40. Enos Slaughter was traded to the Yankees in 1954 (famously crying at the news), Rogers Hornsby to the New York Giants in 1927, and "Red" Schoendienst, an earlier Albert, following the Rajah to the Giants about three decades later. Loyalty is a two-way street, and there you have five former Cardinals, with 53 Cardinals seasons between them, each with retired numbers now by the club, that were told to hit the road back during the days when a "hometown discount" was called "the reserve clause." News to Tony LaRussa, self-described protector of the Cardinals tradition: a meddlesome players' union didn't have shit to do with any one of those deals.

posted by CM @ 8:39 PM