Should White Sox Bring Back Vintage Manager Tony La Russa?

CHICAGO — When Tony La Russa got hired to manage the White Sox 42 years ago, he made certain his desire to bring a World Series championship to Chicago’s South Side was front and center.

But 10 years before he would capture the first of three titles his teams won in Oakland and St. Louis, La Russa – then 34 – said he knew Sox fans weren’t willing to wait forever for a winner.

Now, more than four decades after he laid the groundwork for a Hall of Fame career — 2,728 victories, the final of which came in Game 7 of the 2011 World Series when La Russa guided the Cardinals to their second title under his leadership — La Russa appears to be in the running to return to where his big-league career began.

Yet, whether La Russa, at 76, is the best candidate to replace Rick Renteria, who was fired last week despite guiding the Sox to their first playoff berth since 2008, remains up for debate.

While La Russa’s baseball IQ and in-game management skills are unquestionable, if – and how well - he would relate to a clubhouse full of young talent – of which La Russa would, in many cases, would be 50 years their elder certainly has to factor in.

The decision of who replaces Renteria lies squarely on general manager Rick Hahn’s shoulders.

The fact the Sox have requested and received permission to interview La Russa, the Angels’ senior advisor of baseball operations, demonstrates that owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s opinion that La Russa could work some late-career magic in Chicago is at least being considered by Hahn.

USA Today reported last week that the job is La Russa’s to lose. But winning over Hahn, whom the Sporting News named its American League executive of the year, and winning over the clubhouse would certainly have to happen before any potential winning took place on the field.

“I think if he walked into the interview with Rick Hahn and completely knocked his socks off and (proved) he would be able to be a 2020 manager,” he could (get the job),”said WBEZ sports contributor Cheryl (Raye) Stout, who covered the Sox during La Russa’s tenure and produced his radio show on WMAQ. “But I think it’s going to be Rick Hahn’s decision…and Rick is going to have a list of questions, a criteria he wants to meet. And if Tony meets that, he’ll get the job.

“Everyone says it’s a done deal, but I think (Hahn) is a smarter GM than that. I think he’s going to have more than one person to talk to.”

In addition to producing winning baseball, La Russa has established himself as a player’s manager, that, Stout said will defend his players to the very end. He did so in Oakland and in St. Louis where he defended former slugger Mark McGwire, who later acknowledged to using performance-enhancing drugs while breaking Roger Maris’ single-season home run record in 1998. But even while protecting his players, whether La Russa can relate to the modern-day player after nine years away from the game as a manager may require a change of heart on his part.

In 2016, when asked about former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick choosing to take a knee during the national anthem to protest social injustice, La Russa questioned the “sincerity” of Kaepernick’s protest, saying that Kaepernick was struggling for attention and used the stance to shine the spotlight on himself.

“I would not, to the best of my ability, I would not sanction anyone taking a knee,” La Russa said. “I think that’s disrespectful and I would really question the sincerity of Kaepernick … I don’t buy it.”

Now it’s up to Hahn to decide whether he is buying La Russa as the next Sox manager. In a 2014 interview with MLB.com, Reinsdorf called allowing La Russa to be fired by then general manager Ken “Hawk” Harrelson as one of the biggest regrets of his career. How his loyalty to a manager who won 522 games with the Sox and led the team to the 1983 American League West Division by a 20-game margin factors into how he stacks up alongside other candidates like former Astros manager A.J. Hinch and former Red Sox manager Alex Cora is yet to be seen.

At a time when players this season routinely protested social inequity on the field after the police-involved killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, La Russa may find difficulty in building the kind of clubhouse camaraderie that Renteria built in four years. How relatable a 76-year-old manager can be to a young core of talent will have to be weighed with La Russa’s acumen as a baseball man and a keen manager of bullpens.

While his toughness and willingness to go to the mat for his players is well-documented, Hahn must decide whether the dedication to winning that was so evident when La Russa was introduced as the Sox manager in 1979 carries over to the job of getting the Sox to the next level in 2021 and beyond.

“I’m a hungry manager,” he said in 1979, according to the Chicago Tribune, four years before guiding the Sox to a 99-63 record and the team’s first postseason berth since 1959. “I have this fire that burns inside me and it tells me I want to win any way I can.”

Stout believes the decision will come down to Hahn, who is charged with building off of some of the momentum the White Sox created this year, but that must also find a manager who can move past some of the shortcomings Renteria demonstrated in a collapse late in the regular season. The idea of bringing La Russa back has already drawn mixed reaction from media pundits and fans alike. But nearly 40 years since La Russa brought his “Winning Ugly” mentality to the South Side, fans are just looking for a winner.

But as La Russa knows, they don’t want to wait forever for it to happen.

“The White Sox fan base, they could hate anything at any time,” Stout said. “That’s the just way they are. You could have the best manager ever come here, and they would still find fault. But (La Russa) would definitely have to win over the fan base. It would have to be with wins and if he were to be hired, he would almost have to win the division and go far in the playoffs for them to accept him. Otherwise, they would think he was out-dated.”