Word: larussa
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Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa says he's never known a ballplayer so able to keep his eye on the task. "He has this technique that allows him to totally tune out distractions," says LaRussa, who has been McGwire's manager, in Oakland and in St. Louis, for all but 18 months of the player's 12-year career. "And he did this with the whole world watching." Fifteen minutes or so before game time, "Mark would withdraw from the clubhouse horseplay and stare into his locker. You'd see him, and you'd know he was spacing...
...seemed that everyone in the world with the last name of Maris had to put his or her life on hold to sit in Busch Stadium. "He put more pressure on himself that day than any other time I've seen him," Tony LaRussa, who has managed McGwire almost all his career, told TIME. "There are certain things you can't force. You just do the best you can, and it happens or it doesn't happen. I think he was going to try to force a home run that day." He was. McGwire choked during batting practice, overswinging...
...Guns 'N' Roses war dance Welcome to the Jungle. After a home run, he jogs around the bases with his head down, and he takes a curtain call only when the fans won't let up. He has spent almost his entire pro career working for tactician-manager Tony LaRussa (who makes decisions based on numbers crunched in his dugout Macintosh Powerbook), but McGwire doesn't need the coach's signs. His job is hit rock with stick. He is more elemental than even Ruth or Cobb. He is refusing, for now, to sit down with most media, even charming...
...McGwire over Griffey is racial. "I think you can answer that question yourself," was as close as Ray Lankford was going to come. "I don't think it has anything to do with black-white, and it irritates the hell out of me when I hear it," says LaRussa. Maybe the real reason the fans dig Big Mac is because he's built like a home-run hitter of old. In fact, old home-run hitters didn't look as much like McGwire as they should have. McGwire is who we imagine Babe Ruth to be; he's like...
...Cardinals got distracted. St. Louis was so busy worrying about the lack of respect they were getting that they seemed to forget they needed to win one more game. Why were the Cardinals and manager Tony LaRussa so involved with the media at this point of the season? The Dennis Eckersley fist-pumping controversy (and the lack of respect it seemed to indicate) appeared to distract the team from the task at hand. They looked lost the last three nights and they paid the price...