Professor Brown is back, everyone! The question is, will he succeed at finding someone who can steer a DeLorean at 88 miles per hour?
On Wednesday, rumors began to swirling that Tony La Russa will be returning to Chicago’s South Side as a consultant/advisor to Jerry Reinsdorf. When one of my friends told me about the rumor, I first thought nothing of it. Then, on Friday an article by Chicago Tribune Sports reporter Paul Sullivan popped up in my Facebook feed and I started thinking about how two men who are each nearly 90 years old would be able to really help each other fix the problems in the White Sox organization.
My initial thought after reading Paul’s article was “do we really need this trilogy to end badly with La Russa being found dead in the dugout?” It is not even remotely possible that he was cleared to manage again because of the pacemaker issues that arose last year which lead to him stepping down as manager in late August. However, if he really had an itch to come back into baseball and work in some capacity with the league, the Cardinals, or the White Sox there is a high likelihood his doctors would have cleared him to work as a member of the front office in some way. As a result, the rumors from Wednesday were becoming more clear.
However, I was still asking myself if he really would be able to advise Jerry in a great enough way to put a winning team back on the field. Let’s not forget the internal interviews I mentioned Jerry had been doing the last few weeks in my article on Thursday when the news broke. It would not surprise me to hear that Jerry brought Tony in to help with those interviews.
Also folks: Tony has close connections with many people who are significantly younger than him who are still working around the league in different roles. So, if Jerry really wants to be alive to see another championship come to the South Side in the next six years he is going to have to completely clean house and probably turned to his old pal for the connections.
Something else crossed my mind when reading Paul’s article. What’s that, you ask? Well, every time the White Sox have been interviewing managers the last eight to ten years Ozzie Guillén’s name comes up as a candidate. So, what if the rumors of Ozzie replacing Pedro Grifol as manager that have been floating around the last week or so and the rumors of Theo coming to the South Side were being crossed incorrectly? In other words, what if the actual idea the rumor mongers have is that Jerry offer Ozzie 2% ownership to be EVP and also offer Theo 2% ownership to be an advisor? That seems realistic but unlikely because I have never once heard anything about Ozzie wanting to own a team.
With that… let the rumors of the changes on the South Side keep coming!
If you cannot play with them, root for them!