3 Nights in August Quotes

“Because Cards' fans are the most knowledgeable and loyal in all of baseball, they booed almost reluctantly, polite as booing goes, what would have passes as a standing ovation in Philly.”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“There was nothing to say, all the bullets spent. If they were complicated men, they were also professionals, and no empty words of solace from a manager would do any good anyway.”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“he would not do is let the World Series overshadow a magnificent season.”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“So the day after the Series ended, as players flushed out a season’s accumulation of balls and bats and gloves from their lockers, he met with his coaches to constructively delineate what had happened, why the bats had gone silent, why the pitchers couldn’t find the black of the plate. They mused over the edge that had been lost in the fast-forward rush to the World Series. They wondered if the euphoria of winning the pennant, beating no less a force than Clemens, had been too euphoric. La Russa himself wondered if maybe the team had over-prepared, affected by a comment ESPN announcer and Hall-of-Famer Joe Morgan made to him afterward that in his own World Series experience, he didn’t want a lot of information, just the bare bones of how hard a particular pitcher threw and how he used his off-speed.”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“He concluded instead that the fault was his, something he didn’t do—a breakdown of his obligation to prepare his players, never mind how hard he had tried. But”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“But La Russa hearkened back to Paul Richards and the most enduring piece of advice he has ever received, as much about life as about managing: It’s your ass, it’s your team, so take responsibility.”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“Over the past quarter century, La Russa had learned to survive in the foxhole by examining his own actions first: a detached clinical examination to avoid wallowing in the mud of what just occurred. As he stood in the corner of the dugout waiting for Francona, he knew that his team had just played its worst baseball of the entire season: silent”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“Edmonds trots in from center field into the dugout into a sea of high-fives led by Rolen and Renteria. He sits in the back of the dugout with his cap off, sweaty and luxuriant, his hair, so carefully slicked back before each game in his Hollywood style, now standing at attention in certain spots. It’s a great play, so great that La Russa leaves his foxhole to congratulate him, an almost surreptitious shake of the hand because he believes that this is a player’s moment to be shared by other players and that the last place a manager should be is in the middle of it, as if he somehow had something to do with it.”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“It takes a second, maybe two, the crowd going berserk and two entire dugouts up on their toes and the home plate umpire bending his neck into this Bill Gallo cartoon swirl of arms and legs and what belongs to whom and who belongs to what, charged with answering everybody’s question: Where is the ball? Where is the ball? It’s in Matheny’s bare hand. He switched it from his glove right before impact. Glanville is out. HE’S OUT!!!”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“Matheny time to take those two steps up the third-base line and set up in a stoic crouch. It’s going to be a wreck at home plate, a serious wreck. Sosa, due up next, leaves the on-deck circle and, like a bystander vainly trying to ward off a car crash, motions to Glanville with his hands to get down, get down. But the throw is too far ahead of Glanville, his only choice to go for the high-impact head-on collision. He barrels into Matheny, using his forearm to hit him in the face. He uses the rest of his body to try to flatten him. Matheny does a full 360-degree pirouette. His glove goes flying, and if the ball is still in there, Glanville is safe, and the Cubs will win because there’s”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“Morris pitches, as baseball may be the only organized profession in the world where theft is perfectly legal. There are virtually no rules about it. Instead, like suspected cattle rustling, it’s taken care of with an impromptu code of justice much like a batter getting hit by a pitch. It is not tolerated if discovered, and there are some who will resort to the threat of death. But everyone is up for grabs—the pitcher, the catcher, the third-base coach, the first-base coach, the manager, the bench coach—because of a tendency to inadvertently spill secrets.”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“Jocketty’s style also reflected something else—an increasing anachronism in baseball today. He believed that direct communication with a manager and coaches on personnel decisions could only enhance the quality of a ballclub.”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“For La Russa, it was a pivotal moment, one of those moments in which managing the team mentally was more important than managing strategically. He was adamant that none of what was happening would defeat them. The team had regrouped and rebounded”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“don’t think I’ll ever get over it, but my father was my best friend. But in order to be a man, you got to separate your personal life from your work life. It may sound cold, but I’ve got work to do. I’ll never forget my father, but I’m sure he’d want me to keep on working and try to do the best I can do.”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“baseball, maybe even confuse you with a fog of overanaly-sis. As far as he knew, there was no way to quantify desire. And those numbers told him exactly what he needed to know when added to twenty-four years of managing experience. Each line was a concise history of Morris’s twelve outings through the end of May, and the numbers within each line reflected the following: innings pitched, hits allowed, runs given up, and pitches thrown. They told La Russa a story just like his matchups did, and this particular one contained dark foreshadowing. They showed that, out of Morris’s”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“Russa wasn’t adverse to computers, although he has never used one for baseball. He knew that he could rely on Duncan— who in another life would have made a fine hacker, given his ability to tunnel inside without leaving a trace—and was up-to-date on all the latest technology trying to predict player trend lines. La Russa appreciated the information generated by computers. He studied the rows and columns. But he also knew they could take you only so far in”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“It’s also why he gave his little conspiratorial laugh in spring training when he heard of the Red Sox plan, based on analysis by statistical guru and team consultant Bill James, to have rotating closers instead of one designated pitcher. James, in part because of what he felt was the inflated statistic of the save (you get one even with a three-run lead), believed that it wasn’t always necessary to bring in a classic closer to pitch the ninth. La Russa repected James, but based on managing nearly 4,000 games, was convinced James was wrong. La Russa was also right: the Red Sox ultimately dumped the idea when it became”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“Some coaches think that the best way to deal with pressure is to ignore it, treat every moment of a game the same so as not to heighten the tension even more. La Russa believes that players need to openly acknowledge pressure—literally embrace it as “your friend,” in his words—because the more they embrace it, the less it can intimidate them. He teaches hitters that the best way to deal with pressure is to prepare for it, come into the at-bat with a keen sense of what the pitcher is likely to throw and how you should handle it. Most important, when you’re up there, focus on the process and not the result; don’t project into the future. Forget about the noble but irrational concept of going for broke. Put away the hero complex and simply try to get something started. But don’t hesitate, either: In clutch moments, you’re unlikely to get your perfect pitch, so don’t wait around for it. Be aggressive. Nobody lives these principles better than the great Pujols. Alfonseca serves him a sinker low and inside to start the inning. It’s a good first pitch: difficult to drive, difficult to get into the gap. Pujols stays inside of it with his hands. He doesn’t try to do too much with it; he simply makes contact, and the ball scoots up the middle, past the shipwreck hulk of Alfonseca. It’s a single, an Oscar-”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“Some coaches think that the best way to deal with pressure is to ignore it, treat every moment of a game the same so as not to heighten the tension even more. La Russa believes that players need to openly acknowledge pressure—literally embrace it as “your friend,” in his words—because the more they embrace it, the less it can intimidate them. He teaches hitters that the best way to deal with pressure is to prepare for it, come into the at-bat with a keen sense of what the pitcher is likely to throw and how you should handle it. Most”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“Just because a pitcher has thrown extra pitches doesn’t mean he’s done,” says Leyland. “One of the areas where a manager falls into a trap is when he worries about who he will have to answer to after the game.”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“Home-run hysteria peaked in 1998 when the Cards’ Mark McGwire and the Cubs’ Sammy Sosa battled to break perhaps the most sacred record in all of baseball, Roger Maris’s sixty-one home runs in a single season. Both players didn’t just break it; they shattered it: McGwire hitting seventy home runs and Sosa sixty-six. La Russa managed McGwire when he broke the record, and McGwire admitted that during the season he had taken a steroid precursor known as “Andro,” short for androstendione. Andro was available over the counter at the time, although the NFL and the Olympics had banned it. McGwire made no attempt to hide his use of it. He kept a bottle on the shelf of his locker in plain view, and La Russa does not believe that McGwire ever used anything other than Andro (he also stopped taking it in 1999 and still hit sixty-five home runs). He was big when he came into the league in 1986 and over time became dedicated to working out as often as six days a week in order to prevent further injuries. In the early 1990s, he actually lost weight to take pressure off a chronically sore heel; weight loss runs counter to the bloated look of someone on steroids. But the same could not be said of Canseco. Despite a body that ultimately metamorphosed into an almost cartoonish shape—Brutus meets Popeye—he denied throughout his career that he ever had taken steroids, until his playing days ended in 2002. Two weeks later, ever the performer, he admitted with much ballyhoo that he had indeed been on the juice. Rickey Henderson was another high-profile player who moved to his own brooding rhythms. In all of La Russa’s years of managing, no player in baseball has ever been more dangerous than Henderson with his combination of on-base percentage and base-stealing skills and power. Impervious to pressure unlike any player La Russa had ever seen before, he became a marked man around the league because he could beat you in so many ways, and he still starred for almost the entire decade of the 1980s.”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“Baseball’s owners could have exerted their clout on the players’ union to agree to testing, but every time the issue was raised, the union said it was a violation of players’ privacy and sealed off further discussion. The owners may have had their own motivations to let the problem continue to escalate. In the late 1990s, the owners—desperate to reclaim”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“the game’s fan base after the strike of 1994 that had cancelled the World Series—latched on to the home run as a marketing tool. Fans liked it, and if steroids helped fuel the home-run frenzy, so be it. The tacit sanctioning of steroids upset La Russa and other managers and coaches, and their unease wasn’t simply altruistic. Throughout the 1990s, several innovations had gradually shifted the game in the hitters’ favor: a lowered mound, added expansion teams (which enlarged and diluted the pool of pitching talent), new teacup-sized ballparks, a tighter strike zone. Add steroids to the list, because they gave strength to drive balls farther, and it was like “piling on,”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“team generally about”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“game, “play naked.” If it was evident by the late 1990s that taking steroids improved performance, it was also evident that the one entity that could curtail it most effectively—the Major League Baseball Players Association—would not do so. “In each case where any of us would approach a player, what ended up happening was that the union made it clear that you’re not going anywhere with this one,” said La Russa. So he and other managers and coaches were left to deal with the problem on their own. During”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“But Canseco clearly wanted to be somewhere else—weary of the red, white, and blue bunting and all that other hype. He was still a prodigious hitter when he wanted to be, but what was the point of making a man play in the World Series who didn’t want to play in the World Series? He dogged a play in the outfield in Game 2 that cost the A’s a victory, so La Russa benched him in Game 4. He tried to cover for Canseco by claiming that he had an injury, and Canseco did in fact have an injury, the crippling baseball disease of disinterest that comes with too much security and too much money and too much attention. Of all the players La Russa”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“The psychiatric component of the game—urging players along with pleas and prods and love and tough love—getting them to play hard all the time and focus on competition, was only an occasional duty. The biggest problem that players had in the 1960s and 1970s was, according to Duncan, insecurity: the knowledge that if they didn’t perform, they would be up and out. It was a merciless environment for players. But now the problem is overconfidence, the job security they have earned over the years breeding, as”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“He spends more time than ever now schooling players on the value of competition. He explains to them in spring training the challenge and magnificence of getting a World Series ring, because “it won’t happen accidentally. You gotta tell ’em to want it.” He sees how quickly clubhouses empty out regardless of how sweet the win or how tough the loss, suburbanites hoping to catch the 5:05 home, all-night talk of baseball replaced by simply wanting to get to wherever they’re going. He wishes there were more team parties, but when so many players are glancing impatiently at their Rolexes because it’s almost ten o’clock, no party could generate much esprit de corps. In recent years,”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“La Russa has had more than his fair share because of the situations in which he has managed. But he also believes that no aspect of the game has changed more profoundly in the last twenty-five years than the values of the players—what turns them on and turns them off and whether some of them can be turned on at all.”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager

“The old attitude could also show itself in defeat, as when Eckersley refused to flinch from the fury of reporters’ questions in the clubhouse after he gave up The Home Run to Kirk Gibson in the 1988 World Series against the Dodgers on that fateful back-door slider that went through the front door instead.”
― Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager