La Genius

"No, you won't see La Russa writing a book like this because, if you believe him, he had no clue any of this was going on.

Think about that for a minute. La Russa was the manager of the Oakland Athletics at the time when many believe the steroid era in baseball blew up in the A's locker room, with McGwire, Canseco and others believed to be using the drugs in the late 1980s and early 1990s time period, when Oakland was a dominant offensive team. And then, La Russa moves to another league, the National League, in 1996, to manage the St. Louis Cardinals, and brought a rejuvenated McGwire over with him. And then, under La Russa's watch, you have the summer of 1998, the battle between McGwire and Sammys Sosa over Roger Maris' 61 home run record -- a 37-year-old mark -- with McGwire so big he looked like he would explode if you stuck a pin in him. Over a three-year period, under La Russa's watch, McGwire hit 193 home runs, an unprecedented total.

Yet if we believe La Russa, he was ignorant of any performance-enhancing substance use in both Oakland and St. Louis. This man -- George Will's example of brilliance in the book, 'Men at Work,' a baseball manager with a law degree, the subject of the book, 'Three Nights in August,' by Buzz Bissinger, a book that, according to Publisher's Weekly, 'reveals La Russa's history and personality, conveying the manager's intensity and his compulsive need to be prepared for any situation that might arise during, "the war" of each at-bat' -- didn't know the stars of his teams were using steroids.

Of all the absurdities of the steroid era, this might be the most absurd."