Jim O'Donnell: Piersall would guffaw over La Russa's new status as a baseball classicist
SOMEWHERE, JIMMY PIERSALL is laughing.
He's busting a gut over the idea Tony La Russa has suddenly emerged as lord keeper of all that is august and sacred about Major League Baseball.
La Russa's newfound self-identity has been in massive media play all week.
That's since he chided molten-hot White Sox rookie Yermin Mercedes for belting a home run off a 3-0 pitch late in a blowout win over Minnesota Monday night.
Mercedes did what he has been conditioned to do - hit a baseball hard and far.
He missed a sign. Things happen.
But ever since, La Russa has been attempting to hold the high ground as some sort of new-mill "baseball classicist."
The grand irony is that when a young La Russa and his Sicilian-Spanish blood was faced with a true baseball classicist all those years ago - that being Piersall - he couldn't handle it.
Piersall was still part of the White Sox broadcast scheme. La Russa - then age 37, less than half of his current 76 - was in his first go-round as manager of the Sox.
"La Russ-o," as Piersall said to his dying day in 2017, had the smarts to be a very good baseball manager but not the seasoning.
Piersall - paid to critique the Sox on the fledgling SportsVision of Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn - kept making that perfectly clear in his postgame comments.
The July 1982 evening finally came when "La Russ-o" and coaches Jim Leyland and Art Kusnyer drove to the SportsVision studios in Streeterville after a game at the old Comiskey Park to "confront" Piersall.
"Three tough guys, all at least 15 years younger than me, coming down at an inappropriate time and place to threaten me," Piersall later told The Daily Herald.
"Leyland was the most threatening. But I told them, 'I may get only one of you, but it's going to be you (pointing to La Russa), you (Italian slur) (blank-blank)."
No one "got" anyone that hot summer night.
A year later, Piersall was doing Sox postgame commentary on WMAQ-AM (670) alongside Nancy Turner. Two years after that, he was forever gone from Anything Sox.
Decades following, he acknowledged La Russa's Hall of Fame successes but would only slightly alter his overall perspective of the man.
"(Bill) Veeck hired him too young because he worked cheap," Piersall said.
"As a player, he couldn't make it in the big league, so he rode buses in the minors too long. He was bush and part of him will always be bush.
"He can't help himself. He was smart enough to get his law degree and maybe should have been a lawyer helping all those other Cubans (sic) down in Tampa."
La Russa's current Sox own one of the best records in baseball.
When things get dicey - like the last several days - there are unconfirmed reports he and Reinsdorf sit in a dimly lit room and listen to Frank Sinatra's "My Way."
High above lyrics about intransigence, the probability is that Jimmy Piersall is laughing.
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• Jim O'Donnell's Sports & Media column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com.