About a month ago the roast of long-time Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa was announced and, shockingly, our name was left off the guest list! We roasted him anyway. Go internet!
The actual roast took place last weekend though at the Annual Dinner of the St. Louis Chapter of Baseball Writers’ Association of America though you may know them as SLCOBWAOA. The “roaster roster” included Detroit Tigers manager Jim Leyland, broadcaster Mike Shannon, Fox2’s Martin Kilcoyne, actor Billy Bob Thornton, famed college basketball coach Bobby Knight, and former Cardinal Steve Kline.
Not surprisingly, the majority of the roast sounded really lame “How about those crazy line ups huh? The pitcher batting 8th?! What’s up with that?!” Derp! However, after reading some accounts, the roast may have been better than we initially gave it credit for. Lets compare!
First, as predicted, there were plenty of lame, kiss-ass “jokes”:
“TLR does have a sense of humor. Have you seen some of his lineups?” – Kilcoyne
Billy Bob Thornton asked for 10 seconds of silence in honor of Tony and pitching coach Dave Duncan‘s personalities.
Bobby Knight threw a chair.
…but there were some actual roast-quality jokes, most of them coming from Kline. If you recall, we went with Tony’s tenuous relationship with Ozzie Smith:
First off, it’s too bad Ozzie Smith couldn’t make it here tonight…great to see Royce Clayton here though!
So did Kline:
He suggested that La Russa “does great for animals. It’s people he sh**s on. Ask Scott Rolen or Ozzie Smith.
Gotta cover Tony’s brush with the law a couple of years back with his Spring Training DUI:
Tony always looks so bad ass in the dugout rocking the shades at night, which he says is so the other team can’t see his eyes. Which is true! …except during Spring Training…then they’re because he’s hung over.
Coach Knight did the same:
In his retirement, Knight volunteered to be TLR’s driver, but decided it would be no fun. He would have no one to talk with since TLR falls asleep at every light.
We touched on Tony’s love of animals:
Tony seems to be a really great guy though, his work for pets through is ARF charity is a great thing and Tony’s Home for Little White Infielders is still going strong. It’s like the guy collects these guys: David Eckstein, Aaron Miles, Bo Hart, Ryan Theriot…it’s like Tony is the Mrs. Garett to the MLB version of Facts of Life! …Eckstein is Tootie.
…and so did Kline:
Kline commented that the manager likes cats, except one. “The only pussy you didn’t like was J.D. Drew.”
Brillant. That one was so good it made us mad we didn’t of it.
Well we have to admit, it turned out better than we thought, and all the credit for that goes to Steve Kline who we saw once at the Chick-Fil-A in West County Mall. Nice guy.
Still think we could have taken the roast to the next level. Promise you’ll call us when you do Dave Duncan and we’ll promise to start working on some “Chris Duncan can’t catch” jokes.
Roast summary and quotes from The Cardinal Nation Blog