This is going to blow up on them, right? The White Sox are going to self-destruct?
We all said it was an odd fit, Tony La Russa and a Major League dugout in the year 2021. We all said it was an especially odd fit, Tony La Russa and arguably the most fun roster in baseball in the year 2021. And so far, it has seemed like an odd fit. But the White Sox are winning. They’re winning despite missing Eloy Jiménez. They’re winning despite missing Luis Robert. They’re winning without packages, boxes, or bags.
The proper way for this to be handled, of course, would have been for the Twins to send Willians Astudillo out there to pitch to Yermín Mercedes, defend his own honor as a Major League pitcher, wrassle around on the ground with Mercedes for a few minutes while La Russa let out a slow purr from his perch at the end of the bench, and move on. Instead, Tyler Duffey threw behind Mercedes, and while it’s a silly thing to be upset about (if you’re just tuning in, Astudillo is a position player nicknamed La Tortuga and is among the most delightful characters in the solar system, and Mercedes went yard on him on a 3-0 count the other night while Astudillo pitched mop-up in a 12-run loss), the Twins also desperately need a spark, and as a Joe Kelly blogger I’m legally prohibited from ever criticizing a team for searching for a spark in the form of enmity with a rival.
For whatever it’s worth, the spark worked. Duffey got tossed, Rocco Baldelli got tossed, Tim Anderson defended Mercedes from the bench (I haven’t seen a clip of La Russa during the affair, which is really sinful on the part of either the Twins broadcast or The Internet™). And now we wait. We wait to see if this will ignite a White Sox meltdown we all assume is coming but also aren’t positive will come. We’re all doing the “He can’t keep getting away with it” thing from Breaking Bad. Will he get away with it?
If La Russa doesn’t get away with it, Anderson seems like a good interim manager. At least would know how to defend his players.
