Tony LaRussa is the ultimate enabler. You only wish that you had a boss like him. Actually, you only wish you were one of his favourites because if you were, he would berate and discredit anyone with the temerity to question your moral character and do it all with a very stern tone.
No, LaRussa is not a lawyer, although he does have a law degree and was admitted to the Florida Bar many years ago. He is a baseball manager for the St Louis Cardinals; a very successful one who is third on the all-time list of victories and one day soon will be in baseball's Hall of Fame. He is also arguably the most naive 'intelligent' man in the universe, or so he would like you to believe.
For years LaRussa has run a one-man campaign extolling the virtues of disgraced slugger Mark McGwire, a hulking behemoth long suspected of using performance-enhancing steroids to help him shatter historic home-run records. Despite a plethora of evidence against McGwire, LaRussa insisted his man was clean right up until the moment last year when McGwire publicly admitted he had used steroids for years. LaRussa said he was surprised and shocked and he said it all with a stern face and nary a whiff of embarrassment.
This past week LaRussa made news for once again illogically absolving his current superstar slugger, Albert Pujols, of any blame. In a story that held Major League Baseball hostage as spring training camps opened, Pujols refused a new contract offer from the Cardinals, saying he would no longer negotiate with them this year and effectively become a free agent at the end of the season.
Pujols is far and away the best player in baseball and has been for a good five or six years. He is on pace to become one of the greatest players of all time and at only 31 years of age and in good health, he appears to have a number of quality seasons in front of him. An iconic figure in St Louis and throughout the Midwest, Pujols did not even make the list of the 25 highest paid players in baseball last year. Ridiculous as it sounds, he was woefully underpaid at US$15 million last season and now he is done with giving the Cardinals a hometown discount and understandably wants to be the highest-paid player in the game.
But according to LaRussa, Pujols is not being greedy because he figures the players' union has told Pujols that he must get as much as possible to set the bar higher for future player contracts. 'I know what he's going through with the union and, to some extent, his representatives, because his representatives are getting beaten up by the union,' LaRussa said. 'I know that he's getting pressured. And it's not arm-twisting. It's dropping anvils on your back and through the roof of your house.'
