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"Three Nights in August": Buzz Bissinger goes inside the mind of Cardinals manager Tony La Russa as he battles the Cubs. A bit too far inside.

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April 11, 2005 | The big baseball book of the season, non-tabloid headline division, appears to be "Three Nights in August," a granular look at a key three-game series in 2003 between the Cubs and Cardinals from the point of view of Cards manager Tony La Russa by Buzz Bissinger, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Friday Night Lights."

Sounds great, doesn't it? "Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager," goes the subtitle, and a look inside the mind of La Russa, one of the sharpest and most polarizing figures in baseball -- if you're like most baseball fans you either think he's a genius or a vastly overrated tinkerer -- sounds pretty intriguing, especially from a writer who's already served up a sports classic.

I wish I could say I liked it more than I did.

Bissinger goes a little too far "inside the mind" of La Russa for my taste. Going native is the journalism slang for a reporter who identifies just a wee bit too closely with his subject. That's not quite fair, because La Russa is as much collaborator as subject here. The book was his idea and began as a typical as-told-to outing before the men agreed to let Bissinger take over, with La Russa having approval.

Bissinger writes in the preface that while La Russa read the book before publication and "clarified" a few things, he didn't ask that anything be removed, even though some of it is quite candid.

That's good. The candid stuff, some of which can be embarrassing, is some of the best reading in the book. There's a long examination of the politics and honor codes of hitting batters that's the best treatise on the subject I've ever read, and it shows La Russa going out of his way to lie to an opposing player, Luis Gonzalez, whom he considers a friend, about whether a plunking was intentional.

A section on La Russa's family makes painfully clear the price 24-hour immersion in one's job for eight months out of every year can exact. And in a world in which La Russa wasn't trying to maximize profits from this book, his share of which is going to his Animal Rescue Foundation, it's likely he'd just as soon have spiked a hard but juicy quote where he told backup outfielder Kerry Robinson that if he wanted more playing time, he should ask for a trade.

"Go find somebody who's going to give you the four or five hundred at-bats," La Russa says. "And I hope they're in our division so we can play against you."

But what's not so good is that Bissinger never challenges La Russa. He simply buys all of La Russa's ideas as gospel. He never makes the manager defend his points or explain his more questionable actions. That would be OK if this were La Russa's book, as told to Bissinger, but it's not.

The climax of the fascinating beanball section is La Russa ordering pitcher Jeff Fassero to drill Gonzalez, the Diamondbacks slugger, in retaliation for the D'backs hitting Tino Martinez of St. Louis. The back story is that all three are friends, graduates of the same high school in Tampa, and Gonzalez has done work for La Russa's charity.

Not only did La Russa order the hit, he'd even intentionally walked a batter in the eighth inning of a close game to make sure Gonzalez came up in the ninth. Afterward, La Russa felt bad so he left a message on Gonzo's cellphone: "You can think what you want, but you check with anybody who has played with me. We don't hit someone just because they're hitting good against us."

No, you hit someone because he's the best hitter on a team that just hit one of your guys. Gonzalez has said he knew the rib-tickler was coming and bears no ill will, that's just baseball and all, but Tony, did it make you feel better about the whole thing to act like a lying weasel to your pal? Silence.

That's too bad because La Russa, who's a lawyer, is a hell of an arguer who can make you feel like he just kicked your ass in a debate even if he didn't convince you of anything. I'm speaking from experience here.

Next page: Unprovoked attacks on the stathead crowd, plus some good stuff