As a rule, I do not have much patience for certainty.
Certainty has a way of narrowing the mind: the more certain a person is in their beliefs, the more skeptical I am of those beliefs. I am not innocent of this, of course, but I work against it as best I can. Boring people reside in worlds of black or white; interesting folks live in the grays.
Well...that feels like a sufficient lead-in.
Having renounced certainty and all her empty promises, I am now going to make a 'certain' statement.
The Chicago White Sox are going to have a bad year in 2021.
We’ll get into the parameters of that statement in a moment, but I want to wallow, for a moment, in my certainty of that fact. Everything I know about baseball, everything I have learned from trying to think better about baseball by writing for this site, every mistake I’ve made in that work, and all of the broader understandings I’ve come to about human beings and why we got along or don’t get along…all of that tells me that the White Sox decision to hire Tony LaRussa as the team’s manager in 2021 is a mistake.
I’m not certain about much. I’m certain about this.
Should I really go into all of the reasons this is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea? Isn’t it intuitively obvious?
Well, Ok. I have some time.
We can start with the fact that Tony LaRussa hasn’t managed a major league team in a decade. That is a very long time to be out of a clubhouse, and while LaRussa’s post-managerial roles have kept him near the players of a few franchises, it seems unlikely that he’s stayed on the cutting edge of what the job currently entails.
And then there is the fact that the White Sox are very much not the kind of team a person like Tony LaRussa should be managing.
If you told me, last year, that Tony LaRussa was coming back to manage the Astros or Dodgers, I would’ve understood the decision: those were two teams with a decent run at success, looking to cross the finish line. It’d make sense to hire someone like LaRussa to get them there.
But the White Sox aren’t Houston or Los Angeles: they a young team coming off a short season where they significantly outperformed expectations. We have no idea how much their record is a reflection of skill and how much is a reflection of good fortune or circumstance. They are certainly a hungry team, a team looking to prove something.
It’s my belief – founded on no evidence but ample anecdotes - that the very best match for a young team trying to prove itself is a young manager trying to prove themselves. It is a case of matching energies: you want a skipper who has the energy and motivation to channel a team’s drive towards something positive. Dick Williams in 1967 Boston was an example, as was Billy Martin in 1969 Minnesota. The first incarnation of Tony LaRussa, when he took over the White Sox in 1979, fits the bill.
But what is the motivation for 2020 Tony LaRussa? He is already in the Hall-of-Fame: this is a vanity project. It is unlikely that he has a great commitment to the position, unlikely that he is aiming to stay at the helm for three or four years. This is a talented manager looking for one last ride into the sunset.
And the White Sox players and fans deserve better.
It is profoundly disrespectful to the players who put in the hustle in 2020 to see the reins of the team handed to someone wanting a final ride. The White Sox had a fun season that showed significant promise: they deserve a manager who will commit to the next steps. Perhaps the team is good enough to contend next year, and maybe they're two or three years from really contending. They deserve a manager who can see them through either timeline.
Those are team-level concerns: there is also the broader problem of a changing landcape in American sports. Like it or not, sports in this country is undergoing a significant sea change. Social media has eroded the barriers between players and fans, and politics have entered sports discourse in a way that was unimaginable even four years ago. There is a rising tension in the game, and none of us have any idea what directions things are going to break in the coming years.
In light of that, what sense does it make to hire a person with such baggage? I am not talking about the DUI issue. I mean all of it.
Tony LaRussa has been a public figure for forty years: it seems very likely that he has said things that were fine in 1979 or 1985 or 1992 that are not viewed in the same light today. For all the players who enjoyed playing under LaRussa, there are bound to be a few who disliked him. Which voice is going to come out louder, in this moment?
That is not intended as a knock on LaRussa: it is just a point on where we're at. We are in a moment when a person's past trails behind them like toilet paper stuck to the bottom of a shoe. Maybe that’s progress, and maybe we're better off ignoring that trail. I'm just trying to communicate the reality of this moment.
And - relatedly - the players of today are different than the players who were in the majors when LaRussa last managed. I am forty-one years old, and I sense that there is a very clear disconnect between how I understand the world, and how people who are ten or fifteen years younger see the world. They have been shaped by contexts and constraints that differ from mine, and that gap means my abilities to reach that next generation are limited.
Recognizing that, can we really expect Tony LaRussa, at seventy-six, to know how to motivate and challenge and lead a players who are fifty years younger than he is? Do we expect the tricks and traits he learned in 1983 or 1990 or 2000 to work all the way foreward in 2021? Is it even fair to ask?
And then there is the drinking issue. LaRussa has previously been charged with a DUI, and he was arrested for a DUI again this year. The second arrest came the night before the White Sox announced his hiring to be their manager, a significant lapse in judgement. I don’t know about you, but I’m always skeptical when a new hire is battling a hangover on Day One.
I am trying to see any positive for hiring LaRussa, but I don’t see one. He cannot be considered some tactical genius operating on the cutting edge, not in a league where organizations like the Rays exist. He cannot claim the faith or trust of the players on a team he hasn't worked for: none of them know him from Adam. He probably won't bring a spark and energy sufficent to match the spark and energy of a young team, and he cannot sell them on the promise that he is with them for the long haul. At best, LaRussa is a mercenary.
If I were a White Sox player, I’d be disappointed. If I were a White Sox fan, I’d be ticked off. The White Sox have a fantastically fun team that is easy to root for, a team that seems to be a good team. They have good leaders in Abreu and Keuchel, and they’ve got some terrific young talent to develop. They’re playing in a division that could easily be theirs in the coming years: Cleveland is crying poor and Detroit and Kansas City are a few years off. The near future is between the White Sox and Twins.
And the White Sox have significantly handicapped their chances by selecting the wrong man for the job. Tony LaRussa is one of the brightest minds in the game’s history, but he doesn’t belong in the White Sox clubhouse in 2021.
David Fleming is a writer living in western Virginia. When he is not picking fight with Hall-of-Fame managers, he welcomes comments, questions, and suggestions at dfleming1986@yahoo.com.