Tony La Russa is Ruining My Life

It was just a small, simple dream that I had; a dream of a Cardinal rotation without Joel Pineiro. A simple dream for a simple man, with simple tastes. A dream of summer evenings spent on the veranda, listening to the baseball match on the Victrola, sans Joel Pineiro. 

Now that dream has been ripped from me, torn asunder by a cruel and uncaring manager. I thought, just for an instant, that my dream might actually come true, that El Pinata Grande may have managed to piss off the coaching staff enough to punch his ticket out of town, but it now looks as if that was false hope. 

Tony La Russa is standing behind his candy-filled pitcher, assuring us all that Pineiro is penciled in as the fifth starter already. Son of a bitch. I feel like the rug has just been pulled out from under my feet. 

First off, what the hell, Tony? All we hear, day in and day out, is how important it is to have competition for playing time, for players to earn their spots. Isn't that the theme of spring training every single year? And yet now we get this, a pitcher that barely belongs in the major leagues at this point, being handed a rotation spot before spring training games even start. I don't get it. It goes against everything Tony believes in. Which brings me to my second point. 

I think La Russa may be out to get me personally. He's trying to destroy my credibility, you see. I write about how Pineiro may be gone, Tony comes out later that same day and refutes the notion. I'm telling you, this isn't about Joel Pineiro. This is about Tony La Russa and his plot to get me. 

What I can't figure out is why me. I don't know that I've done anything to La Russa worthy of this level of hatred, that he would deliberately make his starting rotation worse just to spite me.

I mean, sure, we've all made fun of his godson the wookie, but that hardly seems important.

Sure, I've taken a few shots at his coaching staff.

All in good fun, right? And yes, I've even questioned Tony's motives at times when his decisions seemed unusually insane.

But those certainly don't seem to be the kinds of things that would make a guy hold a grudge, to me at least. Unfortunately, it seems that Tony isn't nearly as understanding a guy as I think he is.