Paul Sullivan: Tony La Russa hiring proves Jerry Reinsdorf is still the boss of the White Sox

CHICAGO — Imagine you could rectify the biggest mistake of your life before it’s over.

Maybe it was a bad marriage or a poor career choice or buying a house that has been nothing but a hassle since the day you moved in.

People do it all the time. We divorce, we change jobs and we sell houses at a loss just to end one chapter in our lives and start over.

So you can’t really blame Chicago White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf for trying to make amends for what he has called the biggest regret of his baseball life, allowing general manager Ken “Hawk” Harrelson to fire manager Tony La Russa in summer 1986.

Since the “mutual” firing of Rick Renteria, the La Russa rumor morphed from “absurd” to “unlikely” to “OMG, it’s really happening!” Now it’s official, with the Sox making the announcement Thursday on Twitter.

Let the wild rumpus begin.

Hiring the 76-year-old La Russa to manage again 34 years later makes absolutely no sense to most Sox fans, but it makes perfect sense if you put yourself in Reinsdorf’s shoes. At age 84, with time running out to see the Sox win another title and with no one in the organization brave enough to tell him there might be better options, Reinsdorf simply was doing what he does best — asserting his authority.

Make no mistake: This is a power play right out of the Trump playbook, though even Omarosa eventually turned on her friend from “The Apprentice” and left a job she clearly wasn’t qualified to hold.

La Russa, good soldier that he is, never would do that to Reinsdorf.

Naturally, Reinsdorf and La Russa downplayed their friendship as a factor in the decision.

“Well, I don’t know how many of you have been fired,” La Russa said. “And if you’ve gotten fired how close you could ever be to the person that decimated my family, my wife and little girls, who wouldn’t talk to him for years. That’s a little bit tongue in cheek, but not totally.

“If there was any truth to what you’re saying, it would be not reading Jerry Reinsdorf at all correctly. His major interest on the baseball side is what is best for the Chicago White Sox, and the fans we’re hoping to drive into out ballpark in droves. Any past relationship or current relationship he’s made with me over the years. … I mean, there were other opportunities to hire me, and I wasn’t hired, so it’s nothing different now in Jerry’s case.

“The reason I’m here is because Kenny and Rick believe that I’m the guy that gets a choice. The only way it worked was that we have talked baseball for 20-something years, and he understands how much I love the game, and I understand how much loves it. Beyond that, I don’t think it’s a factor.”

Are executive vice president Ken Williams and general manager Rick Hahn, the Sporting News Executive of the Year, on board with the decision? Hahn said all the right things Thursday, and Williams was not on the teleconference.

Remember, Williams once told me any moves the Sox make are his “responsibility,” adding: “Believe me when I tell you this, the first phone call when the chairman is upset, it isn’t to any of those guys. It’s to me.”

But if Reinsdorf wanted it done, what choice did Williams have?

When the chairman hires an old friend he once called his “brother,” the decision no doubt is his and his alone.

The immediate fan reaction to the La Russa hiring was a mix of anger and frustration, especially coming off such an enjoyable season that provided so much hope for the future. Media types — myself included — will harrumph, mostly because we like to harrumph.

But Reinsdorf has enough friends in the media that approve of anything the Sox or Bulls do, so the Sox spin will be delivered with aplomb.

For Reinsdorf, it’s a win-win situation. He rewards his friend and annoys his critics at the same time.

La Russa also has nothing to lose. He walks into a cushy situation with a talented team and a chairman committed to him. And La Russa will manage again in a town that holds baseball dear to its heart. He’s back in the high life again, and his presence alone will bring the Sox the national attention that has been absent since former manager Ozzie Guillen was chased away and left for the Miami Marlins in 2011.

And even Harrelson, who was lobbying for La Russa on sports talk radio, can rewrite his history. “Over the years, every time the subject of the 1986 season surfaced, I have been crucified in Chicago,” he wrote in his autobiography. “It’s as if I am the guy who traded Babe Ruth or caused the Black Sox scandal or lit the first match to ignite the Chicago Fire of 1871.”

All is forgiven … well, except perhaps for trading young slugger Bobby Bonilla for over-the-hill pitcher Jose DeLeon.

In reality, the shock waves will wear off in the months leading into spring training, and a splashy free-agent signing will make everything good even for the La Russa skeptics.

And it probably doesn’t matter who the Sox manager is in 2021. They should contend for the Central Division title no matter who makes out the lineup or calls on the bullpen. The postseason, as we’ve seen, is pretty much a crapshoot, but signing free agent Trevor Bauer could make the Sox the team to beat in the American League.

Bringing back a Hall of Fame manager from the past isn’t anything new on the South Side. Al Lopez, who ended the team’s 40-year pennant drought with the “Go-Go Sox” in 1959 and retired with a stomach ailment in ’65, returned to replace Eddie Stanky in July 1968, shortly before turning 60.

Lopez was sidelined less than two weeks later after undergoing an emergency appendectomy. He abruptly retired before a game in May 1969 for unspecified health issues. “He is a sick man,” shortstop Luis Aparicio said. “He used to run out to argue with the umpire. This year he walked.”

Several years later, after purchasing the team for a second time in 1976, Bill Veeck hired 67-year-old Paul Richards, who had managed the Sox from 1951-54 but had been out of the dugout for 15 years. The 1976 Sox were miserable, losing 97 games in Richards’ one and only season. Veeck later made him the farm director, and La Russa was hired to manage their Double-A Knoxville team in 1978 before becoming Sox manager a year later.

According to his SABR biography, Richards was a self-assured manager, noting that a New York Times columnist wrote he “thought he was smarter than everyone else, which in itself is neither unusual nor necessarily unpleasant. But he gave you (or at least me) the impression that he thought you were too dumb to understand how smart he was.” La Russa once said Richards’ influence on him as a young manager was a “career-maker” and that Richards advised him: “Trust your gut, don’t cover your butt.”

La Russa made it to the Hall of Fame by trusting his gut.

Now Reinsdorf is trusting his.

———

©2020 Chicago Tribune

Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.