La Russa here to help
Understands importance of clubhouse
Let’s check off some of the reasons why Tony La Russa has been hired to work in the Red Sox front office:
• Been around the game forever.
• Has a close relationship with president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski from their days together with the Chicago White Sox.
• Having just turned 73 last month, he won’t be angling for a job in the organization other than the one he has.
I suspect the main reason La Russa has been hired is that he’ll make for a nice hangout pal for Dombrowski, without any real power. No problem with that. Happens all the time in sports.
But if La Russa can help at all, it’ll be in this capacity: He understands the importance of a good clubhouse and the vital role that veterans play in keeping things devoid of needless drama.
And from the messed-up handling of the Manny Machado takeout of Dustin Pedroia to the David Price-Dennis Eckersley dust-up, needless drama was the Cal Ripken Jr. of the 2017 Red Sox: It never missed a game.
It’ll be rookie manager Alex Cora’s job to make things right in the Red Sox clubhouse. La Russa has no plans to skulk around the joint, talking or acting like he’s some kind of shadow manager. As he said during yesterday’s “Meet Tony” conference call, “I’m not getting in his way or try to influence him, because I know he knows the direction he wants to go. I’ll just be a resource.”
It’s one thing to wonder if La Russa will be butting in on batting orders and pitching changes, the latter being something the Hall of Fame manager turned into an art form so grating to some people that it has been argued, hysterically, that he ruined baseball. But since he’s not going to be in the dugout, there’s no need to go down that rocky road again.
As for La Russa’s sermonizing about such issues as players taking a knee for the national anthem — old Tony doesn’t much like that, naturally — he can yell at clouds all he’d like.
So let’s talk about clubhouse. Now we all know La Russa is tight with Eck from the glory years with the Oakland A’s to their time together with the St. Louis Cardinals. Earlier this year, La Russa spoke out on the Price-Eck issue, telling the New York Daily News that while, “I’ve heard really good things about David Price,” the bottom line is that “whatever David had to say, he should have said it privately. Doing that in front of the team, I hope he regrets it, because that wasn’t the right thing to do.”
While Price-Eck is indeed in the past, as is the Machado mess, the challenge for Cora will be to make sure those type of things don’t happen again.
During yesterday’s chat with the media, La Russa noted that “the relationship part within the ball club between manager, coach, players is absolutely critical. Guys are so distracted by so many things. To get them on the same page is a huge priority for Alex and the coaching staff.
“And what you find is that if you have a core of players that are willing and able to join into that challenge, to get on the same page, that’s really your best scenario.”
La Russa mentioned veteran players he managed back in the day, such as Carlton Fisk and Tom Paciorek with the White Sox, and Chris Carpenter and the late Darryl Kile with the Cardinals.
“I don’t know that you can be successful today unless you have, I don’t care how great a leader Alex is or the coaching staff, unless you have some players that will cosign your message, because you’re not around them all the time,” he said. “They’re in the locker room, they’re going to be on the back of the bus or at dinner, and they have to carry the philosophy of how you compete, how you’re going to be as a team, they have to carry that message that Alex and the coaches are communicating.”
Noting the role Cora played with the World Series champion Houston Astros, La Russa said, “You see the spirit the Astros have had and how tough they’ve been to play through some really difficult competition. I’m going to be curious to ask Alex questions about what they did to make it work now. It wasn’t that long ago that I was down there and I think I can give him a couple of suggestions if he asks.
“I’ll ask him who are your leaders in the clubhouse and he will say who they were and he already understands that’s going to be a very important priority with the Boston Red Sox. I know that even though David Ortiz is gone, there are other guys down there that’ll carry the ball.”
This is just boilerplate stuff, sure. But the Red Sox now have a former manager working upstairs, something they didn’t have under deposed manager John Farrell. Maybe it would have helped him to have just such a conduit.
Cora’s task not only is to identify leaders in the Boston clubhouse, but to determine if those leaders are acting for the common good.
Dom brow ski and his statistical analysis brain ia cs won’t be able to help him with that.
La Russa, though, might be able to help — as long as his input is devoid of politics. And pitching changes.