LAKELAND, Fla. -- Some first impressions from spring training:
1. Tony La Russa looked incredibly relaxed as he chatted in Tigers manager Jim Leyland's office on Tuesday, leaning back in a chair and trading verbal jabs with his longtime friend. La Russa is essentially a baseball lifer and arguably the greatest manager of all-time, but there has not been a day, he indicated, when he has regretted his decision to retire. "I'm not missing the baseball side yet," La Russa said.
He intends to follow Detroit Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski for the next couple of weeks to learn more about front-office operation, and then he'll go watch games in Arizona, where he hasn't been in spring training in almost 20 years. La Russa has talked about a role with Major League Baseball to work on special assignments, at the behest of commissioner Bud Selig.
But there was nothing in the way that he talked that would give you the impression he wants to manage again. Rather, he seems fully comfortable that he made the right decision to walk away from the St. Louis Cardinals. "It's a long time to be in one place," he said. "The place [the Cardinals' franchise] needs a fresh look."
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ABOUT THIS BLOG
Buster Olney
Buster Olney is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine. He began covering baseball in 1989, as the Nashville Banner's beat reporter assigned to the Triple-A Nashville Sounds. Later, he covered the San Diego Padres (1993-94), the Baltimore Orioles ('95-96), the New York Mets ('97) and the Yankees ('98-2001). Olney joined ESPN The Magazine in 2003, after six years at The New York Times, and he's the author of the Times' best-seller "The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty," a book about the Paul O'Neill-Tino Martinez Yankees dynasty of 1996-01.
He grew up in central Vermont collecting baseball cards and listening to Red Sox, Expos, Phillies and Pirates radio broadcasts, and was a rabid fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He graduated from Vanderbilt University the same year as hoops legend Will Perdue, and ranks among the all-time leading scorers in pickup basketball at Memorial Gym. He claims to have witnessed the Commodores' winning football season in 1982 (although anthropologists have not yet confirmed this).
Olney also contributes to ESPN.com, ESPN Radio, ESPNEWS, "SportsCenter" and "Baseball Tonight."
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