By Tony La Russa

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The minutes stretched out into a kaleidoscoping elongation in which my senses of all that surrounded me and the seconds that slid past melded together into imperceptibility and the rain that poured over the intersection of Grand and Magnolia soaked the brim of my Cardinal-Red cap to run over the tired creases that had throughout the years found homes in my face; my order from King And I Thai¹ dripped down heavy droplets to complete the saturation of my shoes. I was not moving, for my physical being had come to reflect the stagnation in my heart that no amount of Budweiser and Bourbons² could lubricate into mobility. It was a powerful storm. Sudden and fiercely directional, as are most storms of the midwest. The winds blew. They pushed and drove that which they found in their path, be it stagnant, adaptive, or merely fleeing. I was not moving, but if you could glimpse past the surface of my fettered flesh you could see the inspiration that came borne by that blustering force of nature. The rain came and I remained.

Baseball³ had always been my world. I can’t describe the beauty that I see in the rounding of the bases, the hot crack of a connection between wood and a fastball, or even just sharing six to fifteen beers with my old man while we watched Fredbird antagonize a losing team’s fans to tears. It all breathes a life into my soul that no pleasures of this world can duplicate⁴. My life has swirled the ever-onward pace of growth, and I know that I, your very own Tony La Russa, am fortunate beyond the measures of reason to enjoy the bounties of my life as I do, but the stimulation of devices and demands of a public that cries on not only for more and better but faster too has diminished my passion for this world we share.

Where once my disappointments were but parameters by which the machinations of my soul were contained, I have of late found the levies of this life to be taxing in a way that does not just constrain me, but dims the brightness of my passions. I felt in my earlier days—when children were captivated by America’s past time instead of graphic rendered sets of Legos, when merely the mention of managing a team convinced a pub’s staff to allow a man to serve himself, when teams still practiced playful rounds of wrestling and sang proud shanties in the communal showers post practice—that all the world that beckoned and swirled around me held endless avenues for a man lose himself and in losing himself all that he held dear, but, so long as I clang ever tight to my love for this great game I was on base and safe as any man could hope to be.

This relief had not reached me in longer than I could remember. In the fly-by weeks of August 2022 our lovely birds; red, mighty, and beautiful, had displayed a talent that reflected the greatness I saw within them since the day I first laid eyes upon them, whispers had grown to shouts of adulation as a certain designated hitter continued to outperform all reasonable expectations, and the robot that I used to continue my control of the White Sox had developed such a sophisticated degree of sentience that I no longer had to pay any attention to my conquests abroad and could rule over my empire with merely heeded commands and the occasional software update. All this ease should have flowed forth a constant stream of mirth that no misfortune could mire, but I found that this life–this life sometimes so very cruel–has ways of reaching into our hubris with a long arm.

In short, my grandson⁵ said baseball was boring and called me a ******⁶.

Minecraft. I understand the obsession, but to give his boyish eyes over to this deceiving device rather than to receive the real, flesh and blood raucous of the absolute bomb our definitely-not-on-steroids designated hitter had just blasted into the depths of hell itself was nothing short of witnessing a retched violence that swirls past my eyes in a horror show every time I close my them. I screamed at the lad. Budweiser soaked the unfortunate folks surrounding us in the stands⁸. I hurled his rectangular seducer from the height of Big-Mac Land and he hasn’t spoken to me since.

I haven’t slept a night since. Over and over I saw the boy captured by Mojang studios and shook awake to find myself adrift in a world that had managed to slink past my temple guards and into the sacred realms of baseball. Not even in those hallowed halls of Busch Stadium could my spirit escape the prying powers of technology and modernity. It beckoned for attention constantly, always demanding in greater quantity and with a greater pace, and my grandson, Dennis La Russa, was nothing if not another number of this raging world’s conquests.

Then, after days drown in the dripping of depression and doubts for what may come if even my precious game could not sustain the fine youth of America, I found myself bearing Thai food on the streets of our nation’s⁹ capital and positively soaked in the onslaught of some freshly imported low barometric pressure. The storm blew, my left arm raised, three handles of Beefeater smashed to the pavement, and the umbrella spread through my eyes just as revelation spread through my mind. It was time to make an adjustment. The rain blew fierce as Fredbird picking up a light bag from one of his fence-men on 7th Street but my eyes found a dryness, a constant in which to operate as was their nature; I knew at once this storm was only operating within the confines of its nature, and a smile spread across my face in recognition of this old fool learning another lesson about this world. Our natures are innate and it is not for us to despair their developments but rather to receive and to react.

My grandson, Dennis La Russa, had been shamed and several fans in the seats below Big Mac Land lacerated by shattered electronics in folly. Dennis La Russa was but a child. He wrapped himself warm and snug in the sincerity that comes from acting on impulse. Dennis La Russa did not act in cruelty but in ease. He was merely beholden to the natural impulses within his beings that cried out to adapt to this perpetually in-transit onward world in which we operate, and his foolish old grandfather had mistaken his actions as insults when he should have considered them as opportunities to know his replacing generation.

So let’s add a fifth base already.

Look I’m two weeks in and 238 tall-bois deep on Bud-heavy and this fucking Minecraft game has already added a DLC pack and two patches and our game hasn’t changed in any meaningful way since it’s conception¹¹. This game has new seaweed and a half dozen other things to kill me as soon as I find a halfway decent strain of diamond that it didn’t have a week ago; add a fifth base. Picture it out in center field. Put it way deep too, like, back against the wall so that some of these guys that look a little “soggy around the midsection”—to steal a phrase from Will Smith’s best movie¹²— have to actually get a little bit of that Charlie-horse-Hustle going on. Picture the opportunities we would see presented with this very minor alteration of our game. Fielders would need to make sure they weren’t obstructing any runners headed through the outfield. That’s right, we can’t have any interference with the runners on the new base, so some careful consideration will have to be made by those trying to catch a fly ball, finally adding some much needed danger to the outfield game. Also the collisions that do happen will be spectacular. Picture some lithe little Hermes of a short stop dropping back for an awkward fly just to get smashed to diminutive bits as he collides with some horse-meat catcher coming in with a pace like a lion sprinting through the sweet sands of the Sahara.

The mega base must carry a series of benefits that not only justify the presence of its spectacular nomenclature but also reflects the struggle a runner will feel as his lungs fill with steam and blood to make it across the dreaded lengths that separate the mega base from second, and I have just the elements to introduce to do these seemingly impossible tasks.

The mega base will be the only base in the game that runners may pass by. Got a guy going to the mega base and one on first? A deep shot sends the sojourning soldier of Fredbird to third while the mega base player holds his ground, waiting for the time to strike. Missed ball at the plate? Oh no, the man at second goes to the mega base and the one on first steals second. HOLY FUCK AND A HALF folks this doesn’t drip with a single perfidious drop of boredom now does it?

Oh, and did I mention the mega base is the only base that is untouched by the ravages of time itself? That’s right, any runner who finds himself stranded on the mega base will be allowed to restart the next inning there and continue his quest home. Now, any player on second will have an escape route if his team fails to deliver him from the purgatory that is watching Paul DeJong bat and flee towards that salvation that awaits in the mega base. Then they may deliver themselves like Odysseus returning home from the Circe’s temple and score the winning run in innings to come, or whatever.

The base’s proximity to the centerfield¹⁶ wall offers new potential to entertain our legions of fans. Picture Paul Goldschmidt blasting a ball past the defenders just to find himself stuck on the mega base as his teammates run into some bad luck at the plate. Normally, he would be destined to a stay at base with no recompense for the suffering he endured on his way to a safe spot on the field but, thanks to the mega base, he can interact with the fans¹⁷. He is going to be so close to them he will have literally no say in the matter. Should they choose to bathe him in adulation or literally pour the sudsy beverages of the enraged upon his protesting head he will be at the mercy of their inclinations, and I say that this is nothing but good. If gamers, like Dennis La Russa, find a game is “totally bogus” or “no problemo” gaming companies respond in real time, so why shouldn’t players get in-game feedback on their performance from the fans. This will allow stadiums to supply the fans with new merchandise, like beer bongs to hang over the wall, squirt guns to cool down the mega base occupying player, or whips to disperse the biles of their displeasures upon viewing an inadequate performance from their minds to a target’s fleshy back¹⁸.

I could come up with more ideas than this if I sat down and really ruminated on it, but the wait staff here has been chasing me out since I ate my third oyster platter and I gotta go catch up my Vig with a couple of gentlemen across the river. I mean only to leave you, my beautiful reader, with the assertion that our game is as sacred as it seems to each of us but it is only as sacred as it seems to each of us. If we don’t reach the coming generation with the splendor that we have become accustomed to we will be doomed to watch our beloved sport dwindle and gray into a memory consumed by the ever open and ever yearning maw of progress. We must face with a smile the dangers of progress, my friends. So fear not the risk of novelty and instead embrace success; embrace the future; #embracethebase. 

This is Tony La Russa, signing off. 

Fredbird bless. 

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¹I had ordered the seafood scampi, Pad Thai noodle. A dish I will recommend to any of you who cross paths with that fine, aforementioned delicatessen.

²A drink I invented that is exactly what it sounds like.

³Or even Scary Fredbird for that matter, such as he was known after his display of wrath after game six of the 1985 world series, in which he did peck forth the eyes of many subjugates so that  he may salve the pains of his insulted honor with tears that had not yet even known the oxygen of a world so unjust.

⁴Not even that tube-service I got on a rollercoaster.

⁵Dennis La Russa

⁶A word that is not said in the La Russa house. So I’m not sure where young Dennis La Russa learned this language but I am highly suspicious of the spaghetti slinging blowhard Mario Rossi that lives up the street from Dennis La Russa’s very own abode. I see through your sauce based masquerade Mario. I know what you are you Mussolini loving bastard. Your gnocchi will not fool Tony La Russa. I killed when I drove my T-62 through the occupied villages of Salo and, if I find that my grandson Dennis La Russa learned these words from you, I will kill again.

⁷All you mommy bloggers will be pleased to note that I limited Dennis La Russa to Bud Light, in respect of the fact that he is eleven years old.

⁸All apologies to those who found themselves suddenly in the splash zone, but let us draw peace from the fact that any other spill of Budweiser would almost certainly not have been cut fifty-fifty with Captain Morgan Black Cask.

⁹That capital being of the only nation matters of course, Cardinals Nation baby.

(Full Disclosure, the G and T flight’s I keep ordering are really starting to hit so we may get a little whacky from here because I refuse to edit)

¹⁰And I have received so much foamy, carbonated, communion. Glizzies too. Body and blood, ya know?

¹¹Well… segregation…

¹²Men In Black.

¹³My first instinct was to go with “super base” but I just read an article that more or less says that is bad idea.

Wayne, Teddy. “A Certain Word Is Really Getting on My Nerves.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 12 Mar. 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/fashion/super-tuesday-super-saturday.html. 

¹⁴Hence my love of the Hendricks line of Gin. They have excellent packaging and I can drink two bottles of any of them and still make it to my neighborhood Wendy’s unscathed, well, most of time.

¹⁵And wherever else plays this game that I don’t know about.

¹⁶I want the base literally touching it but I know how the commissions can be.

¹⁷Rock bands interact with crowd, why can’t our boys do an improvised 20 minute drum solo—metaphorically, or not I suppose; I’m open to suggestions.

¹⁸I know a litany of adult entertainment companies that will leap at the opportunity to put their brand on the tool used to bdsm up our national pastime.