NEW YORK — Tough times last week for two of baseball’s most enduring managers. At 68 years old and 56 games into the final year on his contract, Joe Maddon was fired as manager of the Angels in the midst of a 12-game losing streak. A couple of days later 77-year-old Tony La Russa came under renewed fire from ever-critical White Sox fans and media for ordering an intentional walk to the Dodgers’ Trea Turner with a 1-2 count.
It didn’t matter that La Russa had a very logical explanation for the seemingly unorthodox move that backfired spectacularly when the next batter, Max Muncy, hit a three-run homer, this was red meat for the legions of La Russa critics clamoring for him to go the same way as Maddon in the wake of the White Sox’s disappointing season so far. ESPN ranked it the worst intentional walk in history.
As La Russa explained it, once a wild pitch by lefty White Sox reliever Bennett Sousa allowed the Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman to advance to second base with two outs in the sixth inning last Thursday, “it wasn’t a tough call” to go ahead and walk the right-handed-hitting Turner — a .333 hitter with two strikes against a left-handed pitcher this year — in favor of the struggling lefty-hitting Muncy, who was hitting .150.
