Cardinals’ La Russa Retires as Champ at BetLM

Cardinals’ La Russa Retires as Champ

Updated Oct 31, 2011 3:12 PM ET

St. Louis man­ager Tony La Russa is retiring.

“I think this just feels like it’s time to end it,” La Russa said Mon­day morn­ing dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at Busch Stadium.

La Russa, 67, goes out a cham­pion after lead­ing the Car­di­nals to a stir­ring seven-game World Series tri­umph over the Texas Rangers just days ago. It was his third cham­pi­onship. He also won the 1989 World Series with Oak­land and the 2006 Series with St. Louis.

The four-time Man­ager of the Year won six pen­nants, three in the AL with the Ath­let­ics and three more in the NL with the Car­di­nals, and his 2,728 vic­to­ries trail John McGraw by only 35 for sec­ond on the all-time man­age­r­ial list.

“Other than some of the per­sonal attach­ments, I feel good,” La Russa said. “I feel good that this is the right decision.”

La Russa said there wasn’t a sin­gle fac­tor that led to his deci­sion, but he began hav­ing doubts about return­ing for 2012 mid­way through the sea­son. In late August he told gen­eral man­ager John Mozeliak and other team officials.

La Russa said the tim­ing of those dis­cus­sions – about the time the Car­di­nals appeared to be out of wild card con­tention before their mirac­u­lous run – was pure coin­ci­dence. He said he sim­ply felt it was time to go, a feel­ing that didn’t change even as the Car­di­nals squeaked into the play­offs on the final day of the sea­son, then upset the Phillies, Brew­ers and Rangers.

He spoke with lit­tle emo­tion at the news con­fer­ence with one excep­tion, when he paused to com­pose him­self as he thanked his wife, Elaine, and two daugh­ters for putting up with­out him over much of the past 33 years. But he did say his meet­ing with play­ers after Sunday’s parade and cel­e­bra­tion was short but emotional.

“Some grown men cried,” La Russa said, then he joked, “I kind of liked that because they made me cry a few times.”

Mozeliak said work is under way to find a new man­ager for the first time since La Russa was hired prior to the 1996 sea­son. A search com­mit­tee will be formed. Mozeliak did not spec­u­late on how long the process might take.

La Russa answered flatly, “No,” when asked if he’ll ever man­age again. He also said he had no plans to be a gen­eral man­ager, but said he is open to some sort of base­ball job in the future.

“Maybe open a book store,” he said.

Mozeliak said the team will have a “long list” of can­di­dates for a job that will likely be con­sid­ered among the best in base­ball given the strong return­ing team – whether or not Albert Pujols decides to come back – and based on the strong fan sup­port in St. Louis.

“There’s going to be a lot of names that we’ll con­sider,” Mozeliak said. “We want to do our due dili­gence. We want to be smart.”

Prin­ci­pal owner Bill DeWitt Jr. said replac­ing La Russa will be a tall task.

“We’re not going to find a Tony La Russa out there, given his career and what he’s accom­plished, what he’s meant to the Car­di­nals,” DeWitt said. “We’re in a pretty good sit­u­a­tion for the future. But it’ll be dif­fer­ent, no ques­tion about it.”

La Russa’s deci­sion leaves the future of his coach­ing staff up in the air. Mozeliak said the new man­ager will be given auton­omy to hire his own staff or retain some or all of La Russa’s. Asked about pitch­ing coach Dave Dun­can, La Russa’s long­time right-hand man, Mozeliak did note that Dun­can is under con­tract for 2012.

As for Pujols, Mozeliak noted that he has a strong rela­tion­ship with the only man­ager he’s ever played for, but doubted it would be a fac­tor in whether the free agent first base­man stays.

“He prob­a­bly under­stood that Tony is not going to man­age for­ever,” Mozeliak said.

La Russa was a .199 hit­ter in a brief major league career. He began as a man­ager with the Chicago White Sox in 1979. He guided the Oak­land A’s to three straight Amer­i­can League pen­nants in 1988–1990 and the 1989 World Series title over the Giants.

La Russa was hired by the Car­di­nals in Octo­ber 1995, soon after the new own­er­ship group pur­chased the team from Anheuser-Busch. His impact was imme­di­ate – the Car­di­nals won the NL Cen­tral and came within a game of going to the World Series in 1996, los­ing to the Atlanta Braves.

Over­all, St. Louis went to the play­offs nine times in La Russa’s 16 sea­sons, won pen­nants in 2004, 2006 and this year, and won two cham­pi­onships, over Detroit in 2006 and this sea­son, ral­ly­ing to win the final two games over Texas, includ­ing the mem­o­rable Game 6 when the Car­di­nals trailed five times and were down to their last strike in two innings. His teams were suc­cess­ful on the field and in the stands – the Car­di­nals drew 3 mil­lion fans in 13 of La Russa’s 16 seasons.

La Russa, who won 2,728 regular-season games, includ­ing 1,408 with the Car­di­nals, said he never con­sid­ered com­ing back sim­ply to reach No. 2 on the all-time wins list.

“I’m aware of the his­tory of the game, but I would not be happy with myself if the rea­son I came back was to move up one spot,” La Russa said.

Wash­ing­ton Nation­als man­ager Davey John­son said La Russa picked the right time to leave.

“I tip my hat to him. He’s had a great career. What a way to go out,” said John­son, who at 68 is a year older than La Russa. “If you’re going to retire, that’s the way to go out; a world champion.”

BetLM's sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by X2 news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more news see: Car­di­nals’ La Russa retires as champ.

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