Tony La Russa likes his job.
“But I don’t enjoy us getting beat,” he said Monday. “I do enjoy coming to the ballpark. But that’s a good sign. I can still get upset and as [ticked] off as I was in Detroit. We’re not cheating anybody.”
La Russa, in his role as special advisor to the White Sox’ baseball operations, coaching and player development staffs, is regularly seen around the team and ballparks home and away, as he was over the weekend in Detroit, where the Sox (21-58 entering Monday’s home game against the Dodgers) fell to 0-10-1 in their last 11 series.
He’s not a meddling presence, and aside from snagging the occasional donut from the visitors clubhouse kitchen as he did Sunday morning in Detroit (“I can do that on Sunday”), he keeps his distance from players.
The Hall of Fame manager’s baseball opinions and knowledge are held in high regard by general manager Chris Getz, manager Pedro Grifo and other Sox hierarchy, but La Russa made it clear again in a conversation with the Sun-Times Monday that he’s not a decision maker. With Getz the primary decision maker after the Ken Williams-Rick Hahn vice president/GM team was fired last August, the notion that La Russa is filling a void left by Williams, the former vice president, is off base, he said.
“No,” he said. “My job description has absolutely zero in common with the [vice] president of the team.”
To wit, La Russa didn’t know when he arrived at the clubhouse Sunday that Eloy Jimenez was coming off the injured list that day.
“Today?” La Russa asked.
“He’s in the lineup,” a media relations person told him.
Explaining what he does, La Russa said, “I’m a special advisor, which means I can advise throughout the organization. I evaluate talent, but I’m not a scout.”
“I’m about how we should come together as a winning team, what the effort is like and how the game is being executed. If you don’t like how we’re running the bases, or taking at-bats or making good pitches and plays you can point the finger at me for having a relevance to that.”
A three-time World Series winner (1989, 2006, 2011) and four-time Manager of the Year, LaRussa ranks second in history with 2,884 wins over 35 seasons, his last in 2022 with the Sox in his second tour on the South Side where he started his career in 1979.
After working for the commissioner’s office and in executive roles with the Red Sox, Diamondbacks and Angels, chairman Jerry Reinsdorf brought LaRussa out of retirement at age 76 in October, 2020. As the oldest manager in the majors, he guided the Sox to the AL Central title in 2021. La Russa stepped down before the end of the 2022 season for health reasons.
His improved health allows him to make many, but not all, road trips. And he has scouted teams at Triple-A Charlotte and Double-A Birmingham. A baseball lifer, he’s in his happy place.
And the job seems just right for him.
“It’s totally advisory,” he said. “You have opinions but you don’t go out there [pushing them on anyone]. That’s not an advisor role. I don’t have an agenda. I haven’t had a thought about interfering. Very simply, build relationships so people in the organization know they can trust me.”
La Russa is close with Reinsdorf, but he sits in the baseball operations suite during games, not the chairman’s, he said.
In meetings, and in those settings, La Russa said he listens more than he speaks.
“Mostly I’m observing,” he said. “If somebody wants me in a meeting they tell me. But I’ve been around advisors [as a manager], and the worst thing you can do is be a bull in a China shop, come barging in and get in the way.”
La Russa has conversations with Grifol and his coaches and offers views on player development, “how to build clubhouse culture and as importantly, how you play the game and how you execute it. That’s pretty much it.”
“Are we playing the game hard enough, and you can play hard but if you don’t execute … the game is meant to be executed. I have a lot of experience understanding how you can make that happen.”