By John Klima
Staff Writer

Tony La Russa was leaning on his fungo stick last Sunday morning, perhaps the symbol for his own well being, but it was difficult to tell if he was holding the bat or if the bat was holding him.

“The first time I hear insincerity, man, I’m going to start swinging this fungo,” La Russa said, shortly after warning his players of “insincerity” of media members who “have their own agendas.”

What La Russa offered the day after pitcher Josh Hancock died was violent passive-aggressive threats. The image of what should be a future Hall of Fame manager, whose tactical insight stands rightfully alongside the elite managers in the history of the game, is blurred in psychological complexity and signs of conflicting motives.

If, as it was proven Friday, toxicology reports showed that Hancock was driving while under the influence of alcohol when he sustained his fatal crash, then LaRussa will have to face an irreconcilable and difficult truth. He is very likely the only manager in major league history to be cited for Driving under the Influence of alcohol in spring training and then have one of his own players die by his own intoxication in April. For the compulsively proud La Russa, this must sting and leave a mark he is surely eager to keep removed from his carefully cultivated legacy.

One is left with the distinct impression that he was trying to cut off the head of a snake before the basket had even arrived, and this is disturbing. This is why it’s can’t be ignored. It did take audacity for La Russa to intimidate people for asking why his pitcher is dead. You almost got the feeling that his fungo bat was a broom, and he was eagerly trying to brush this tragedy under the dirt, and if he happened to crack a few heads along the way, so be it. A baseball man’s fungo, after all, is his best friend.

La Russa is now faced with what is nearly uncharted territory in major league history. Hancock, who died early last Sunday morning when the Sports Utility Vehicle he was driving collided with the back of a tow truck, is the first active major leaguer in history to die in the month of April since Philadelphia Athletics catcher Mike “Doc” Powers perished in 1909 because of gangrene poisoning.

Connie Mack pulled his team to within 3 ½ games of the pennant that season, but there are few modern barometers to judge the trajectory of a season after the early-season death of a teammate. La Russa’s handling of the 2002 season and the death of Darryl Kile in June of that year is the closest we have. What is certain is that La Russa’s ability will again be challenged in a way that none of his other managerial contemporaries have never once encountered.

La Russa’s tendency for vilifying the media and deflecting attention from secrets dates back to the time he conducted a shock-and-awe mission of an Associated Press reporter for asking what was inside that little bottle in Mark McGwire’s locker. But there were disturbing elements last week. Compare La Russa’s reaction with his statements after the death of Kile. He beloved Kile, as did much of baseball.

“It was tough. Darryl (was) such a big part,” La Russa said on June 24, 2002, two days after Kile was found dead in his Chicago hotel room, the victim of an undetected blocked coronary artery. “When he doesn’t play, he’s on the bench. We missed him. He says things during the game. It was very difficult. It’s going to be difficult. It should be difficult because he was very special.”

That was warmth, but this time, anger was an immediate reaction, focused to the point of hostility, obsessed beyond obsession.

GM Walt Jocketty was already defending the Cardinals on Thursday, the day of Hancock’s memorial service, reminding the good folks of St. Louis that clubs cannot control the players away from the park. This is true, but a club assumes all risk when the manager gets a DUI and two months later, one of his pitchers dies in an accident that had people looking for answers.

Perhaps Jocketty was engaged in a pre-emptive strike in his one-paper town. It’s a fair question to ask without feeling the need to duck. Nobody is saying not to have a drink. But as Jocketty pointed out, the cops leave demolished cars outside of high school proms for a reason. Perhaps one should be left outside the clubhouse.

La Russa’s genius for game theory can also be his shortcoming. He is a controlling leader, whose micro-managing tendencies will automatically make some players uneasy and create some feelings of deception and mistrust that are unique not only to baseball managers, but to leaders of all endeavors. Yet it is also these abilities that make him a game tactician of the highest order.

Here was La Russa, trying to control the emotions of his own players, judging the motives of others, creating another us-versus-them divide that is the trademark of our times. In many ways, Hancock’s death, like Darryl Kile’s in 2002, shows us more about the complex nature of La Russa than any double-switch or lineup arrangement can.

What it will also do is provide us with a glimpse of how La Russa’s ultra-intense style marshals what was already a sagging team looking virtually nothing like a defending World Series champion.

The man can run a baseball game in his mind, and for this he will go to the Hall of Fame, and rightfully so. But there are moments when it appears as if he cannot make the differentiation between controlling the diamond and controlling the world around it. Is there a fear of separating the two? La Russa is the chess player who stares at his board long after his pieces are scattered and the game is over.

When he lost Kile, he lost one of his Kings, a person as important to his club’s chances of success as his own baseball acumen. Hancock, 29, was only four years younger than Kile, 33, but the experience level is unequivocal. Kile was a proven ace, a 20-game winner in 2000, a 133-game winner whose last victory was against the Angels in St. Louis just four days before his death. He was a 15-year professional with 2,165 major league innings.

Hancock was a journeyman, who, by all accounts, had a personality to love. But he also had only 177 2/3 major league innings. When La Russa lost Hancock, he lost not a King, but a bullpen Pawn, one in pure baseball terms that is easier to replace. He was his own person, which by all accounts, is not the kind of player La Russa prefers.

The Cardinals were in first place with a 40-31 record on June 21, 2002, a day before Kile died. They had a two-game lead. They were a typical La Russa team: veteran players who needn’t be told how to think or feel, who needed only to play the game how he wanted it played. The 2002 Cardinals played through pain and made it work for them, somewhere transforming their season from a cause for grief to a living memorial.

Those Cardinals staggered through the end of June with a 2-5 record in the week after Kile died, but in July and August, the Cardinals found enough stamina to go 17-9 and 17-14, respectively, before turning it up with a 21-6 September that helped them claim the National League Central title. They swept the Diamondbacks in the NLDS and lost to the Giants in the NLCS.

When the Cardinals woke to the news about Hancock last Sunday, they were 10-13, tied for last place, four games behind the Brewers in a season in which Milwaukee is maturing and the Cardinals may be showing too much age and not enough young pitching. Only Albert Pujols, Jim Edmonds and Scott Rolen remain from the 2002 team, with Edmonds offering up numb explanations about feelings that he’s felt before.

Baseball has seen this before, and not only with Kile and Hancock. There have been 26 active major leaguers die within a season. The results have ranged from tragic to triumphant, and the challenge for La Russa is to find a way to suppress his emotions and get a younger team to win.

Cleveland shortstop Ray Chapman died a day after Yankees pitcher and noted headhunter Carl Mays hit him in the head with a pitch on August 16, 1920. The Indians plugged in shortstop Joe Sewell, who almost never struck out on his way to the Hall of Fame, and in the lore of the game, player-manager Tris Speaker willed them (and hit .388) to a World Series title.

Reds catcher Willard Hershberger committed suicide in his hotel room on August 3, 1940, and the Reds won the World Series. Yankees catcher Thurman Munson died while piloting his private plane on August 2, 1979. The Yankees, after winning the World Series in 1977 and 1978, faded and finished in third place.

“It’s going to be on everyone’s minds,” La Russa said. “That’s the experience we had a few years ago. It hits you and then all of a sudden you remember and you have to go backward a minute and then come back. That’s why it’s a tough process.”

It’s probably a safe bet that the pain is felt strongest in the young Cardinals bullpen. It’s another death and another empty jersey hanging in memory.

“One of the great things he loved about being a ballplayer,” teammate and bullpen member Randy Flores said at Hancock’s memorial service in Tupelo, Miss., on Thursday, “Is you can act like a kid.”

Perhaps the worst aspect is that Hancock’s death was not just an accident, but the result of a poor decision made by an adult following a teenager’s desire. And as sorrowful as it is, there must also come a time when the blame must rest at the grave of Hancock himself. To suggest that should not warrant a manager threatening anyone. Baseball and drinking, after all, go together like a manager and his fungo bat.