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La Russa wasn't warm and fuzzy, but he got results

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 31, 2011 - The first thing that Chuck Korr tells you when you ask him about Tony La Russa and the World Series is that, as a Phillies fan since 1948, he wishes Philadelphia had been the world champions.

But after spending 41 years in St. Louis, the emeritus professor of history at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who has written widely about sports also acknowledges that if the Phillies had to lose, he was glad the Cardinals were winners.

Reached in London, where he has been for the past three weeks and has not gotten to see a lot of the series because of the time difference, Korr told the Beacon Monday that he was "shocked but not surprised" by La Russa's retirement, because he thought the Cardinals manager would stick around for one more year and move past John McGraw on the managerial victory list, to become second only to Connie Mack.

As someone who has written a history of the baseball players' union, Korr also noted that back when La Russa was finishing his less-than-stellar career as a player and was looking for a way to use his newly minted law degree, he expressed interest in working for the union.

But there was no opening for him there, and the rest - as jubilant Cardinals fans are happy to accept - has been a successful history in the dugout with the White Sox, A's and St. Louis.

"I've always wondered what would have happened if the union had found a place for this young lawyer," Korr said.

Here is an edited and condensed version of our conversation with Korr.

Despite all the adulation these days after the Cardinals' surprise success in the post-season, La Russa hasn't always been a fan favorite. Why is that?

Korr: He had a tough act to follow in Whitey Herzog. I remember talking to a New York reporter who knew Casey Stengel really well, and he said that Casey told Whitey, whatever you do, make sure you've got the guys with the notebooks on your side. Did anybody ever handle the press better than Whitey?

Tony has a lawyer's mentality, and my guess is that he suffers fools not very well at all. He spent a lot of time trying to figure out why people were asking questions to make him look bad. From the time he got to St. Louis, what's the first thing everybody had to say about him? He's not Whitey. Well, if they wanted to hire Whitey, they should have hired Whitey back.

The worst thing that ever happened to La Russa was George Will's book (Men at Work). Nobody likes someone coming in from outside and thinking he's a genius and they're lucky to have him. It's not his fault that he came in with that reputation, but people here think he's not that smart; if he was that smart, he'd live in St. Louis. I don't think he ever got the kind of fair shake he deserved in St. Louis.

What has been La Russa's greatest strength?

Korr: You hire managers to develop players and win ball games, not to be warm and fuzzy. In baseball, he will be regarded as one of the half dozen or so most effective managers. He's won every place he went. He stands behind his players. The players understand that if it's them against the world, they would rather have Tony on their side than the rest of the world. He's gone out of his way to deflect some of the flak from them, and take it on his own. If getting the best out of your players means getting the press and the public off their backs, then do it.

I admire Tony. I don't know what he's like as a person. I have met him three times in my life. But I have a feeling that I'd have liked to play for him.

Who do you think will take his place?

Korr: When you talk about baseball managers, you've got three choices. Some of the names you hear are already on the team, like coaches Jose Oquendo and Mark McGwire.

One is to go with somebody who is successful somewhere else and left for some reason. That's (Terry) Francona. The second is to hire somebody who was fired someplace else for not winning. I hope they don't do that. The third is to hire someone who knows baseball and knows the players on the team.

I think McGwire has too much baggage, whether that should be the case, I'm not saying, but I think it will be the case. The Cardinals have just come off this amazing season - Cinderella, David slaying Goliath, whatever comparison you want to make. Why should they suddenly want to leave themselves open to the criticism that would come with McGwire?

What's your guess about what Albert Pujols will do now that La Russa is leaving?

Korr: Your guess is every bit as good as mine. The conventional wisdom is to look at them as a pair. I don't think that's necessarily the case. I have always felt that Pujols is the Cardinals' to lose, that he wanted to play in St. Louis, and it's up to them to convince him to do what he wants to do, to play here.

Marginally, I think if it were 50-50 that he was going to stay, having Tony there would turn it into 60-40. But I don't think he's going to decide where to go on the basis of Tony.

How will La Russa be compared to the managers ahead of him in victories, Mack and McGraw?

Korr: (Connie ) Mack is incomparable because if Tony owned the Cardinals, he might still be managing the Cardinals. Mack is the greatest winning manager in history, but he is also the greatest losing manager in history, and he wasn't going to fire himself. He managed a few years after he was mentally capable of doing so.

(John) McGraw was so powerful, people were afraid to fire him. People didn't think of them as the New York Giants; they thought of them as McGraw's Giants.

If you're looking for comparisons today, you look at people like Chuck Tanner or Sparky Anderson or Jim Leyland. Particularly with Tanner, both of them had the great forte of getting the best performance out of their players as individuals. That's what managing is really all about. I forget which manager said this years ago, but he said that the real role of a manager is to put a player in the best possible position so he can succeed.

Dale Singer began his career in professional journalism in 1969 by talking his way into a summer vacation replacement job at the now-defunct United Press International bureau in St. Louis; he later joined UPI full-time in 1972. Eight years later, he moved to the Post-Dispatch, where for the next 28-plus years he was a business reporter and editor, a Metro reporter specializing in education, assistant editor of the Editorial Page for 10 years and finally news editor of the newspaper's website. In September of 2008, he joined the staff of the Beacon, where he reported primarily on education. In addition to practicing journalism, Dale has been an adjunct professor at University College at Washington U. He and his wife live in west St. Louis County with their spoiled Bichon, Teddy. They have two adult daughters, who have followed them into the word business as a communications manager and a website editor, and three grandchildren. Dale reported for St. Louis Public Radio from 2013 to 2016.