We revere a lamp next to a cow, disco records and all the dirt we moved to reverse the flow of the Chicago River in order to save Chicago. We are a strange group of people.
Tony La Russa's doctors in Arizona called him out of the team and kept him away from it after he started broadcasting games with only implied oral consent. Since Cairo took over, the team has gone 9-3). Winning the series against the Twins in Seattle is included. Cleveland has matched them step for step, as they remain three games back with 21 games to go in the race for the American League Central title. There is a buzz and bounce in the air that hasn't been there all season.
There are a few things that can be pointed out to explain the best stretch of the season for the RedSox. They hit the ball out of the park again, which is what they should have been doing all year. They hit 16 homers in 11 September games, and slugged.450 after only hitting.392 for the season. This should be a lineup of mashers, but with La Russa's insistence on singles and going the other way, this team has not been the boom factory it was intended to be. The team's exit velocity jumped from 89.2 to 90.4 in September, and the launch angle has gone up by two points. It tends to happen when a team tries to hit the ball in the air and into someone's beer in the outfielder, which it should be doing.
It is a little callous to say that not being pushed into the lineup every day has been a big factor. It's just one big callus for the fans of the Chicago White Stockings.
There are not-so-subtle hints in Bob Nightengale's piece in USA Today as to why that's the case the past two, but what seems to have been the biggest factor is that they give a shit again.
“He told us pretty much, ‘If you don’t want to be here, then get the (expletive) out,’” All-Star closer Liam Hendriks told USA TODAY Sports. “It was eye-opening to some guys who really have never been told no.
“There needs to be repercussions. There needs to be some kind of a risk and reward. That was one thing that reverberated with some guys. “
Said second baseman Josh Harrison: “Let’s put it this way, you can tell your kids something, and they don’t listen. Someone else tells them the same thing, and they get the message. It’s put up or shut up time.
“Miggy has done a great job bringing energy to the team.’’
“Sometimes, it’s good to just hear the truth,’’ Lynn said. “He pretty much told us that it’s time to do this, and if you’re not ready, you got to figure it out. “
There weren't any consequences for the team to play all season. They took poor at-bats, they made outs on the bases, they treated the ball in the field like it was sick, and so on and so forth. The Sox did what a bad team does: they did it. They continued to do it. No one was disciplined or benched as they continued to play dumb baseball.
The purpose of hiring Tony La Russa is to make sure that your team is more locked in than your opponent. They are paying more attention and taking everything that is given to them. Do you remember when Albert Pujols stole a base against your pitcher? The kind of thing La Russa did was that. The kind of thing the White Sox have given away all season until La Russa left.
The players want the ones who didn't come up through the system to stay in the freezer. They have experience with how a team should be run, while those who came up through the system have not. The veterans brought in from other places are yelling, "This is how it's supposed to work!"
Nightengale is La Russa's personal press secretary and he can't help but tie it all back to La Russa at the end of the article.
Lynn, a rookie on the 2011 St. Louis Cardinals team, vividly remembers the feeling of swimming in a sea of mediocrity most of that summer. They were 10 ½ games behind Atlanta for a wild-card berth on Aug. 24, only to go 23-9 the rest of the way, clinching a spot on the final day and completing the greatest comeback after 130 games in baseball history.
They went on to beat the powerful Philadelphia Phillies in five games in the NL Division Series; six games over Milwaukee, the NL Central division leaders, in the NLCS; and in seven games over the Texas Rangers to win the World Series. The manager of that team? La Russa, who retired after the season, was inducted into the Hall of Fame three years later, only to return for a final hurrah in 2021 with the White Sox.
I think it's fuck. It was all. It. That's a way. It's time to go off.
The baseball team is playing as they should be because they haven't been worried about La Russa. This isn't a long-game plan from the drunk uncle who has been wandering through the entire season as if he was lost. If La Russa returns to this team in the last three weeks of the season, you will hear the whole team deflate. The players are telling anyone who will listen that they are the only ones who want him around.
There are reports that people around the city are trying to hack into La Russa's device.
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