Sharing some deep history, Matheny and La Russa are finally about to meet as managers
Tony La Russa was 17 years old when he signed with the Kansas City Athletics in 1962. He made his major-league debut as a largely nondescript player a year later, hitting .250 in 34 games in his only season here. Perhaps his fondest baseball memory in that time was the “immaculate” Municipal Stadium infield cultivated by groundskeeper George Toma.
“When I think about my playing career, it’s best left unspoken and unthought about,” he said with a laugh by telephone on Tuesday before his White Sox team was to play at Seattle.
Just the same, that start with the A’s was both the springboard for an astounding managerial career (third-most wins in major-league history) and the first installment of an ongoing sense of connection to baseball in Kansas City:
That includes his admiration of general manager Dayton Moore (“one of my favorite people in the game”), his longtime relationship with first base coach Rusty Kuntz (who played centerfield for him in 1978 at Class AA Knoxville in La Russa’s first managerial job and was called up weeks after La Russa’s first stint with the White Sox in 1979) and managing current coaches Cal Eldred and John Mabry in St. Louis.
Most conspicuous and intriguing, though, is his relationship with Royals manager Mike Matheny, against whom he’ll compete for the first time in these roles when the Royals play at Chicago on Thursday in the home opener for the White Sox.
Beyond their bond as friends, they are entwined in a number of distinct ways.
It was Matheny who succeeded the retiring La Russa in 2012 in St. Louis; it was La Russa, now 76, who saw in Matheny something he hadn’t seen in himself, or at least something that hadn’t occurred to him, when Matheny played for him with the Cardinals from 2000-04.
As a catcher for what was then his third major league team, Matheny said he was struck by La Russa’s approach and “what it ought to look like to be a winning team” in terms of culture, communication and preparation. And he had such faith in La Russa that he never really allowed himself to question La Russa’s decisions even as he came to “try to think ahead to how he might think.”
But one thing he didn’t necessarily anticipate was La Russa’s correct forecast of his future.
More than a few times, La Russa brought up a particularly fine point about a given game situation and would say, “This is because you’re going to manage some day.”
“And I thought he was out of his mind because I still planned on playing for a long time,” Matheny said from Cleveland during an off-day for the Royals on Tuesday. “But I always took it as a compliment. I knew he didn’t throw stuff like that around. So it meant a lot to me. And, obviously, little did I know the accuracy he’d have with that.”
Asked if he recalled feeling that way, La Russa said, “Sure, sure, sure. Mike had everything to be a leader and a manager. First of all, if you’re a catcher, then you’ve got the combination of understanding the defensive side of it, the pitching and the catching, but you’re an offensive player as well.
“So he had that, he had the leadership, a competitor, total respect as a teammate, great communicator. So that was easy to see if he wanted to remain in the game, he had a lot to offer.”
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La Russa thought the same even after Matheny was ousted by the Cardinals in mid-2018 amid team turmoil that in the eyes of the franchise eclipsed the three straight National League Central titles and a World Series appearance in his six-plus seasons.
When I spoke with him after the Royals hired Matheny to replace Ned Yost in 2019, La Russa was struck by how seriously Matheny had taken the time in between managerial jobs as a chance to audit himself. While serving as a special adviser for the Royals in between, Matheny’s efforts at self-improvement included taking leadership courses, dipping deeper into analytics and working with a media consultant.
(“I don’t think you can ever trust a leader without a limp,” Matheny rather strikingly said at the time.)
“He has done it the right way,” La Russa said then. “You’re the leader, and only you know how much of it you are directly responsible for. With the kind of character Mike has, I’m sure that process (of self-evaluation) was very honest. He probably took more on than he actually did.”
As he thought about it now, La Russa also noted that Matheny is smart enough to know what he doesn’t know.
“Unless you’ve got all the answers, which if you think you do you’re doomed, your experience is going to teach you,” he said. “And like many of us have said, we’d take Mike’s winning percentage right now. So he had a lot of great times (in St. Louis), and I’m sure whatever adversity he faced, he learned from. You’ve gotten to know him: He’s a special baseball person and a special human being.
“The Royals got him at a perfect time.”
Even if it makes for a certain awkward ground between them now … fleeting as it likely will be once they get used to this new reality between them.
Matheny noted that he’s constantly watching other managers during games, not out of what he called a “false sense of pride that I’m going to out-manage anybody” but “just trying to learn. What is it they’re doing? Why? How are they going about it?” That’s both in terms of the moment itself and what might be absorbed for future use.
He expects that will be the same as ever against the White Sox, though he allows as how it will be a new feeling to be “studying Tony through different eyes.” And he concedes that there is something a little strange about adjusting to “people you consider baseball family, and now all of a sudden you change jerseys and it’s the opposite, you’re competing.”
On a similar wavelength, La Russa said, “We always create a family feeling. So it’s just like competing against your family, but we both understand our responsibilities and obligations to our clubs.”
Meanwhile, it’s also not a matchup Matheny had foreseen coming before the White Sox hired La Russa, who had worked for MLB and served as an executive for several other teams when he was hired to manage again after last season.
“I was a little surprised,” Matheny said. “But then the more I thought about conversations we’ve had, I knew how much he missed (managing) and how laser-focused and active he is.”
So he’ll be reminded in an entirely new way of that and the other influences of La Russa that “will always be imprinted on me” when they meet again Thursday.
Competitors that each might be, La Russa said that between Matheny and his other relationships with the Royals, “It’s hard to pull against them … except for the 19 times we play each other. …
“I’ll be glad when the three games are over.”
This story was originally published April 7, 2021 at 8:37 AM with the headline "Sharing some deep history, Matheny and La Russa are finally about to meet as managers."