Tony La Russa in the fallout zone

By Bill Dwyre

Jan. 14, 2010 12 AM PT

The bomb is dropped and the damage spreads. Mark McGwire admits he took steroids and family, friends and acquaintances are hit with the fallout.

Also, former managers.

This was going to be a fairly normal week in the off-season for Tony La Russa of the St. Louis Cardinals, McGwire’s manager for all but a year and a half of his major league career. La Russa had a speech to make in Dallas early in the week for the benefit of his Animal Rescue Foundation and another for the same cause Sunday in St. Louis. In between, he would be in Los Angeles, at Dennis Gilbert’s seventh annual Spirit of the Game dinner Saturday night at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza. That dinner raises funds for, and honors, former and current baseball scouts.

La Russa will receive an award named for Tommy Lasorda. He might very well be talking to Lasorda, one of the all-time masters at generating positive public relations.

As difficult as things are, La Russa is no shrinking violet.

“Dennis told me the program moves along,” LaRussa said Wednesday. “He said I’d have three minutes. But I’ll address it. I’d be foolish to pretend like this didn’t happen.”

Right now, while McGwire is getting slapped around by everybody from broadcasters to bloggers, La Russa is taking some hits too. One columnist labeled him “head-in-the-sand Tony.” Another speculated that, to be unaware of what was going on all those years with McGwire, La Russa must have been managing not from the dugout but from Mars.

“People are saying that I had to know,” La Russa said. “I didn’t.”

He said he was told by Cardinals management that some sort of statement from McGwire was imminent, that he would probably get a phone call Monday morning. The organization had talked about the potential public relations nightmare on the horizon ever since La Russa hired McGwire on Oct. 26 to be the Cardinals’ batting coach.

“Hiring him was totally my idea,” La Russa said. “I wasn’t trying to rehab Mark McGwire. I just asked the organization and they said yes.”

La Russa said he wanted the expertise he had seen McGwire acquire as a student of hitting over the years, first in Oakland and then in St. Louis, where he eventually broke Roger Maris’ season home-run record of 61 and finished the 1998 season with an unimaginable total of 70. LaRussa said he had watched McGwire go from a “see-it-and-hit-it guy with a quirky little stance” to somebody who spent hour upon hour watching film, understanding himself and understanding opposing pitchers.

“I remember talking to Sparky Anderson about Mark when he first came up,” La Russa said. “Sparky said he didn’t think he would ever make it. He could only hit low pitches. Then, years later, he’s hitting bombs off high fastballs against some of the best pitchers in the game.

“So that’s the guy I wanted in our organization, a person who had gone through that learning process and could share that with our players.”

The cynical among us might suggest that McGwire’s learning process was more focused on how to open the medicine cabinet. La Russa understands.

“What he did was a mistake, a huge mistake,” La Russa said. “I’m not excusing him. Nor does he want to be excused.”

La Russa said he watched, with a country of sports fans, as McGwire ducked questions at the congressional hearings five years ago. He wondered then what the real story was, but said he never asked McGwire.

“I figured he’d tell me when he was ready to tell me,” La Russa said.

That occurred, according to La Russa, on Monday morning.

There are about five weeks until the Cardinals go to spring training in Florida, and La Russa said he hopes much of this is cooled down by then.

“Spring training needs to be about the players, the teaching,” he said.

Once again, the cynical among us can have a field day with the concept of McGwire imparting the tricks of his trade. Some of the accompanying slings and arrows will hit La Russa, who understands and is willing to take them.

His hope is to answer them with a high team batting average and a spot in the 2010 World Series.

[email protected]