During his time as the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, Tony La Russa was often present to watch and help honor the greats of the organization. On Wednesday, the Hall of Famer received his own recognition with a field dedication at Ray Leisure Park on South Tucker Boulevard.
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“Through most of those field dedications–if we were in town, I was there for all the great Cardinals guys and to have one yourself…”began La Russa of the honor and having his name make an every day difference for kids to experience baseball.
“That’s the whole point of Cardinals Care,” said La Russa. “We win some games and people are entertained by that. What that foundation has done to put the money into the community in all different kinds of ways, but the Redbirds Rookies is a great example. It’s really important–we’re trying to get kids to get back into baseball. It’s been great for years and now I can just tell by the turnout of the kids and their enthusiasm they’re going to make a lot of use of that ballpark.”
“It’s a really beautiful field, right down the street,” he continued before throwing in a trademark quip. “The kids were all around, they kept saying ‘hurry up and quit talking so we can get out and play’.”
The Cardinals had a bit of joke as well–displaying the winning score of the Cardinals 6-4 victory over Arizona from Tuesday.
“The scoreboard works all right, which I thought was piling more misery on us, but today’s a brand new day,” smiled La Russa, who just celebrated his one-year anniversary as the Chief Baseball Officer for the Diamondbacks.
“I like it when we win, it’s not too much fun when we lose,” he said of the job. “But I like feeling miserable after the game rather being neutral–that’s very unnatural and we’ve got a good situation here. We’re going to get good in a hurry.”
photo credit: Taka Yanagimoto/St. Louis Cardinals.
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