Goodbye Tony, Hello Torre?

By Tom Finkel Tue., Oct. 9 2007 at 1:24 PM

Tony La Russa is almost certainly gone.

And after having helped make some RFT dreams come true, Joe Torre is even more certainly done as Yankees skipper. (The New York Times should have run its season wrap-up on the obit page, and the New York Daily News went so far as to skip the eulogy and call for the Boss to hire La Russa pronto.)

Everything old is news again.

It appears as if the stars may be aligning for Cards fans.

While Joe Strauss floats several respectable candidates for La Russa replacements, there's this from Bernie Miklasz's blog, (bizarre punctuation all his): "OK, let's suppose??La Russa leaves St. Louis ... and Torre is whacked by the Yankees.?? Does Torre emerge as a candidate in St. Louis? Does he give the managing job here a second chance under better circumstances?"

Umm, duh.

Granted, Torre didn't leave St. Louis on the best of terms when he was fired in 1995, but managing the Cards would be a cakewalk after spending years in the New York pressure cooker. Not only is moving from the AL East to the NL Central like going from All-Madden to Rookie mode on Xbox in terms of difficulty, but trading Steinbrenner and the insatiable New York fans for DeWitt and the Redbird faithful is just what Torre's ulcer ordered.

Plus the guy does have some fond memories of the life in the Lou. As a Cardinals player, Torre was the Albert Pujols of the early 1970s, winning the MVP in '71 while leading the league in two of the three Triple Crown categories.

Nothing beats replacing one Hall of Fame manager with another.

-Keegan Hamilton

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