Cardinals manager laments ending

ST. LOUIS -- The passage of time has done little, if anything, to soothe Tony La Russa's anguish.

As Cardinals players prepare to report to spring training Feb. 14, their manager is still stewing over last season. For a time, it appeared the Cardinals were a team of destiny, a team that surmounted tragedy to reach the postseason for the third straight time.

And then, one step away from the team's first World Series since 1987, it all fell apart in a flat, five-game NLCS against the San Francisco Giants.

"You've got to turn the page," La Russa said. "But it still does gripe me."

La Russa has made it to the postseason nine times, and only once has he won it all. His favored Oakland Athletics were upset in the World Series by the Dodgers in 1988 and swept by the underdog Reds in the 1990 Series, but La Russa believes this was the toughest blow to absorb.

La Russa, who won his fourth manager of the year award last fall, called it as his worst October ever.

"It's not even a close call," La Russa said. "To lose to the Giants after what we had gone through that season, and beaten Arizona, was the toughest kick in the gut."

As the Cardinals regrouped from the deaths of broadcaster Jack Buck and pitcher Darryl Kile, not to mention countless injuries on the staff that forced La Russa and pitching coach Dave Duncan to use 26 pitchers, La Russa started to become a believer.

Not at first. In late June, he'd survey the gloomy faces and prepare for disaster.

"I'm living this thing every day, and a few times I was worried that there wasn't enough to keep us going," La Russa said. "It was a period of 10-12 days when Darryl died where I not just wondered but doubted whether we could come out of it.

"I saw guys looking around and they see Flynn (Kile) with three kids and they're worried about their wife and kids, they're thinking about something way beyond the pennant race, dying young. It was totally distracting and they were still playing games that counted, so during that period I'm reading it as close as I can and I'm thinking 'I just don't know. We're all trying, but I don't know, I don't know."'

The Cardinals didn't stay down for long, finishing with 97 victories to win the NL Central. Then they swept the Diamondbacks and aces Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling.

They're still smarting from their shortcomings in the NLCS. The Cardinals were just 3-for-39 with runners in scoring position, dropping one-run decisions in Games 4 and 5. First baseman Tino Martinez was benched for Game 5 after going 2-for-25 in the postseason.

"I think if we would have hit a little better, including myself, we would have had a better chance," cleanup hitter Albert Pujols said.

La Russa constantly replays the lost series in his mind, wondering what could have altered the outcome. He believes his biggest deficiency was not in his handling of the pitching staff, for which he has been widely questioned, but finding a way to rekindle the offense.

"The thing that I have really spent the most time thinking about was, was there something that should have been done to keep our offense rolling," La Russa said. "Those numbers were dramatically different.

"We'd played for two months getting big hit, big hit, bit hit."

The attack drooped without injured third baseman Scott Rolen, but La Russa rejects the notion that the Cardinals would have necessarily made it to the World Series with him.

"Yeah, we lost Scott Rolen, and that's a major hit, but we had a lot of guys playing and didn't get hits with men on base," La Russa said. "What could have been done differently? Could I have worked them out differently? Where there some lineups I could have written differently? Should I have pumped Kerry Robinson in there for a game?

"That's really where I've spent most of my time thinking."

La Russa doesn't second-guess allowing ace Matt Morris to bat in the ninth inning of a tied Game 5, and then sending him back out to pitch in the bottom half. Morris ended up the loser in a 2-1 decision.

"I don't even think that's a close call, in my opinion, as far as what gave us the best chance to win," La Russa said.

Upon further reflection, he said he might not have yanked Andy Benes so quickly in Game 4. Benes was taken out with a shutout in the sixth inning after pitching carefully, and walking, Barry Bonds and Jeff Kent, and reliever Rick White then gave up a go-ahead double to J.T. Snow.

"That's a closer call," La Russa said. "With Andy, when he got vulnerable, we got him out. He had an interrupted season."

If the offense had been operating normally, La Russa maintains, the pitching moves wouldn't have been in the spotlight.

"Some way, somehow, we should have found a way to get to the World Series," La Russa said. "If we can't beat the Angels, that's different."