After 33 years in the Majors and three World Series titles, he's calling it a day. Going out on top, especially with this team and the way the Cards won way the WS must have been draining. The only question is, who's going to replace him?
I was actually going to mention this possibility in the World Series thread, considering La Russa's health problems in the last year. But I thought better of it and didn't say anything, thinking that La Russa walking away now would be kind of silly.
Lebatard was wondering about his health problems today, since a number of reporters covering the series said Larussa was "not like himself". He also wondered if perhaps those were related to some of his decisions during the series (like the phone incident) and that after the series was over, he had trouble remembering the name of the team he played.
I've heard Francona suggested as the kind of player's manager might keep Albert in STL (along with the $$$).
See, my question is "Is he really retired?". If he is, it's a hell of a great finish to a HOF career. But I have my doubts about him being done. There were a lot of rumors about him and the Cards management not getting along for the past couple of years and I remember hearing about him even this year before the playoffs not wanting to retire but looking to move to another team. For instance, I heard a lot about him returning to where he started with the Chicago White Sox before they went with Ventura. I also heard something about him taking over the Red Sox as recently as a couple of weeks ago.
My gut feeling is that he'll chill out for this year but that the urge to keep coaching will make him come back at some point. If nothing else, he's very close to capturing second place in the all time managerial wins list, so that might interest him for one more go at it.
I think the point is that how fair were Ruth's numbers when he wasn't playing the best out there? Sure he was playing the best white players. But would including the blacks have hurt his numbers? Maybe, maybe not.