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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
THIS TIME IT COUNTS!!!!! Except to the guy managing the game.
Tony La Russa, the longtime manager of the St. Louis Cardinals who retired following his Club’s 2011 World Series Championship, will serve as the manager of the National League All-Star Team for the 2012 Midsummer Classic at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig announced today.
Commissioner Selig said: “Tony earned this opportunity with the remarkable run that the Cardinals completed last October, and I am delighted that he shared my enthusiasm about his staying in this role. The All-Star Game celebrates all the best of our game, and it is very appropriate that we will have the chance to celebrate one of the greatest managerial careers of all-time as a part of our festivities.”
La Russa will lead the N.L. All-Stars for the third time (previous: 2005, 2007) and it will mark his sixth Midsummer Classic managerial assignment, matching Joe Torre’s total and surpassed only by Hall of Famers Casey Stengel (10), Walter Alston (9) and Joe McCarthy (7). While leading the Oakland Athletics, La Russa was the American League All-Star skipper from 1989-1991. La Russa has a 3-2 record in his five Midsummer Classics as manager. The remainder of La Russa’s N.L. coaching staff will be announced in the months ahead.
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1. AndrewJ Posted: January 24, 2012 at 10:21 PM (#4045056)Has the pennant winning manager always been the determining factor for picking the manager?
this always reminds me of Larry "Bud" Melman
He didn't, and I wonder if it was an individual league decision (remember when we had them).
In 1972, Danny Murtaugh managed the NL All-Star team (according to BBRef) despite not occcupying the Pirates' bench that season.
Not in the first game (it was McGraw and Mack, not (who would it have been, Charley Grimm and Joe McCarthy?) But apparently (inevitably there's a B-Ref page showing this) ever since, yes.
I was trying to think of some short-term managers recently who might not have been around at the next ASB, Kuenn or McKeon or one of them, but they all seem to have been still in place. I bet some of the Yankee managers of the 70s and 80s posed a problem, but I can't remember exactly how it went down.
the tradition at the time was that if the pennant-winning manager wasn't around, the manager of the team that finished 2nd would be the AS manager. So we had Paul Richards in 1961 (Stengel), Al Lopez in 64 (Houk) and again in 65 (Yogi), and Gene Mauch in 65 (Keane)
Close. You're right that the first game should have featured Grimm and McCarthy, rather than the recently retired McGraw and Mack. But four years later, McCarthy got the gig that should have gone to Cochrane (who just won his second straight AL pennant, and had managed the AL squad the previous year).
For the most part since then, it's gone to the skipper of the reigning pennant winner (except 82, when Billy Martin skippered the AL squad despite not being one of the two managers who piloted the Yankees' in their split-season pennant in 1981).
Edit: Stand corrected on the 60s. Interesting that they reversed course with Murtaugh in 72.
The one that first came to mind was Dick Howser for the Royals, but I forgot the 1986 All-Star Game was the very last game he ever managed. He got a CAT scan after the game after people noticed he was messing up signals and calling people by the wrong name and it revealed he had a brain tumor and he resigned immediately.
Bob Lemon managed the 1979 ASG, even though he had been fired by the Yankees.
Not quite the same, but Dick Williams managed in 1974 in an Angels uniform, despite taking the '73 A's to the pennant. Dusty Baker managed the 2003 ASG in a Cubs uniform despite taking the Giants to the '02 pennant.
I wondered the same thing. Freed from active duty, I wonder if LaRussa will be more inclined to manage to win rather than soothe egos (of course, in Tony's case, it may be impossible to distinguish between managing to win and managing to get as many guys into the game as possible).
I don't get it.
It's not one roster spot. I believe the players vote on someone at each position. And even if they agree with the fans' choice, the No. 2 selection is put on the A-S roster.
CFB's right. With fans' players' and the one-player per team rule, the managers have very little input on filling out the roster.
I thought the players' choice only got on the roster if it was different from the fans' choice.
Anyway, let's talk about Tony LaRussa's shingles. How did I not hear that he was suffering from shingles last season? Look at this picture. Sure, he might also look like that after he falls asleep in traffic and gets rear-ended, but this time it was because of a painful virus that can cause months of pain from nerve damage after the skin rashes go away.
If so, that's a change. In 2008, the fans and players both voted for Mauer as the starting catcher. Jason Varitek (in the middle of an abysmal season), was also named to the team as the players' No. 2 choice.
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