(670 The Score) White Sox manager Tony La Russa guards the castle gates, protecting the competitive integrity of Major League Baseball from those bent on eroding it.
The problem is that the structure crumbled many years ago, and for only good reasons. La Russa hasn't cared to bother to turn around and actually see that this is true, certain as he is that the imposing ramparts at his back are the same as they always were. He's trapped on the wrong side of history, even choosing to turn his own players into adverse parties in his sad and quixotic commitment to a game that, thankfully, no longer exists.
La Russa could've simply enjoyed the booming home run that Yermin Mercedes hit off of Twins infielder Willians Astudillo in a blowout win Monday like the rest of us did or then chosen to address any issues with his rookie slugger privately, but he instead decided the best course of action was to shame Mercedes publicly, call him "clueless," make a tone-deaf reference to wanting to "spank" him and tacitly endorse and invite the ensuing action -- a 93-mph fastball behind Mercedes' midsection Tuesday -- that put him in the way of real physical harm.
La Russa has taken sides against his players, and they know it. Star shortstop Tim Anderson's top-step dugout leadership has been more than symbolic, backed by his not-so-veiled social media comments that have since elicited support from Mercedes himself and others both inside baseball and beyond.
And La Russa's ignorance and obtuseness is only further exposed when he admits he has no idea of any of this, and everything is still fine and right in his anachronistic fantasy world.
"I'm willing to bet there wasn't anyone in that clubhouse that's upset that I mentioned that's not the way we compete," he said before Wednesday's game.
Informed by reporters that veteran right-hander Lance Lynn dismissed the idea of old unwritten rules, La Russa pulled rank, snapping, "Lance has a locker, I have an office. I don't agree."
This is what a manager losing a locker room looks and sounds like, and he's doing so for no good reason. And what resonates now is how utterly predictable and inevitable it was, easy to first-guess. Here's what was written in this same space upon La Russa's hiring last October:
"This is the worst of all possible fits, as all of the positive energy generated by one of the most expressive and outwardly joyful teams in sports will now be suppressed by a dour and backward baseball grump who hasn't done the job in a decade.
It's a franchise that has leaned into its players' outspokenness and proud multiculturalism, going so far as to adopt the marketing slogan "Change the Game" that embraces and celebrates their identity. Yet in La Russa, the White Sox are getting a man deeply critical of such things in a way that suggests he shouldn't even have a role in the game at all."
It was only a manner of how it was going to happen, be it a bat flip or whichever perceived violation of the old Code of Elders.
Turns out, it was a homer by a 28-year-old sensation and burgeoning cult hero with a beer and a burger already named after him, who also happens to have a slash line of .368/.417/.571, and La Russa making a show of treating him like a child makes this all the worse. His words drip with paternalism and privilege, dismissing both the long journey of a veteran professional to reach this moment in his career and the varied baseball cultures in other places that define "proper" behavior quite differently.
And none of that is as significant as not only failing to defend his own player but actively taking up against him in support of a rival, under the guise of some ancient understanding of sportsmanship, away from which baseball has evolved.
La Russa missed all that, doesn't seem to know he did and doesn't care.
His concerns have less to do with what's best for the White Sox than they do his own ego and stubbornness, managing as we all expected he would -- in his own lost time and place as his irrepressible team is left to carry on.
Dan Bernstein is the co-host of the Bernstein & Rahimi Show on middays from 9 a.m. until noon on 670 The Score. You can follow him on Twitter@Dan_Bernstein.