La Russa has no plan to walk away while on top

By R.B. FALLSTROM

The Associated Press

ST. LOUIS -- Tony La Russa has no plans to go out in a blaze of glory. And although it's easy to say now, the St. Louis Cardinals manager said that win or lose, he's satisfied with how he handled the Kenny Rogers "pine tar" incident in Game 2 of the World Series.

La Russa, 62, is under contract through next season and said after joining Sparky Anderson as the only managers to win a title in both leagues that he'll come to spring training as enthusiastic as ever.

"I assume they want me, and I did check as I always check," La Russa said Sunday night. "It's kind of Hollywoodish, you win you quit. But it's burning very, very brightly."

La Russa said if he had acted more aggressively, asking the umpires to check Rogers, that would have been a strategy decision. He believes that such a move would not have fit with his philosophy of how the game should be played, and has adamantly maintained that his close friendship with Tigers manager Jim Leyland did not play into his decision.

"I had no regrets, I have no regrets that I should have done something different than that," La Russa said. "It really wasn't that if we had won somebody would have thought we were taking advantage, it was just because it didn't fit the integrity of the competition.

"Not without seeing if there was a way to fix it."

La Russa brought the smudge on Rogers' hand to the umpires' attention, and asked that Rogers clean off his left hand before the second inning. The left-hander pitched eight shutout innings in a 3-1 victory, the Tigers' only win while losing in five games.

La Russa said his mentors taught him to "abhor b.s. baseball." He views such tactics as a shortcut to success.

"In my opinion, organizations that will resort to b.s. baseball, their success is short-term," La Russa said. "You will build a disrespect for the way your team goes about it, the way your organization goes about it, the way you personally go about it.

"You may win a couple games, you may win a championship or two in the short term, but you're not going to be able to sustain it because you can't b.s. the competition."

La Russa can bench jockey with the best of them, but to him that's just part of the "beauty" of the competition. He thought it would have been wrong to seek Rogers' ejection.

"We get ready, they get ready, you play as hard as you can and there's a winner and a loser," La Russa said. "I feel better because we won, but to me winning the right way was winning within the integrity of the competition."

La Russa noted a Sports Illustrated article that said two Cardinals thought the manager did the wrong thing. He said he gave all the players a chance to step up and voice their objections, and said no one did.

"Nobody said anything to me," La Russa said.