<table> </table> ST. LOUIS | Watching Tony La Russa manage baseball games can drive you mad. It&#8217;s one of his defining qualities.</p><p>La Russa, the St. Louis Cardinals&#8217; manager, will tinker and be clever and take every chance to meddle in the game. He will bat the pitcher eighth. He will send out pinch hitters as if they&#8217;re spam e-mails. He will change pitchers the way NASCAR drivers change sponsor caps after winning a race.</p><p>He plays every game as if it&#8217;s game seven of the World Series. That sounds admirable and it is &#8230; but baseball is a <em>long</em> season. And it&#8217;s hard to watch 162 game sevens. Need four pitchers to get out of this inning? Fine, he&#8217;ll use four pitchers. Need to move the players around the field like toy soldiers? Fine, move the second baseman to right field, the shortstop to first, the pitcher to catcher, whatever.</p><p>This can drive you mad because La Russa slows down the action, wrings the life out of it, takes the game out of the players&#8217; hands and turns baseball (which is a great spectator sport) into chess (which is fun to play, not as much to watch).</p><p>But, hey, one thing is certain: La Russa&#8217;s stuff works a whole lot of the time. He has won almost 2,500 games in the big leagues. His teams have won five pennants and two World Series. He has managed and micromanaged and overmanaged his way to three 100-win seasons and five more 95-win seasons. I don&#8217;t think anyone in sports should be called a &#8220;genius.&#8221; But Tony La Russa is pretty smart.</p><p>And in the top of the seventh inning Friday, he matched up against Royals manager Trey Hillman. And, it was like watching an old gunfighter with the noon sun high against the sky. The Royals trailed the Cardinals by two runs. Then, Mike Jacobs led off with a walk. John Buck followed with a hard single. So, there&#8217;s your situation: nobody out, tying run on first base on a warm Friday night in St. Louis.</p><p>First thing La Russa did was pull starter Todd Wellemeyer &#8212; who had not given up a run &#8212; and put in lefty reliever Trever Miller. This probably seems like a fairly obvious move: Royals outfielder David DeJesus, a lefty, was coming up. Lefty pitchers tend to have more success against lefty hitters.</p><p>But, it seems to me La Russa had more on his mind. He was forcing Hillman into a hard decision. DeJesus has struggled early this year, but he&#8217;s a good hitter. He led all of baseball in hitting with runners in scoring position last year. But by bringing in the lefty pitcher, he nudged Hillman into calling for the bunt.</p><p>&#8220;When you&#8217;re not scoring runs &#8212; even though David has been a little better lately left on left &#8212; I felt the necessity to bunt,&#8221; Hillman would say.</p><p>DeJesus&#8217; sacrifice bunt did work &#8212; it moved runners to second and third &#8212; but it gave the Cardinals a precious out and eliminated one of the Royals&#8217; better hitters. Then La Russa sprung into full La Russa mode: He made a quadruple switch.</p><p>Yeah, a quadruple switch. He brought in hard-throwing reliever Jason Motte. He moved second baseman Skip Schumaker to right field. He moved shortstop Brendan Ryan to second base. And he brought in his best defensive player, Tyler Greene, to play shortstop.</p><p>Wow. In one sweeping motion &#8212; like a hockey coach calling for a line change &#8212; he brought in his best defensive team. And more to the point, he brought in Motte, a relief pitcher who can throw the ball about 100 mph. The Royals were helpless. Hillman had no option but to pinch-hit his two best available hitters &#8212; righties Willie Bloomquist and Bill Butler &#8212; and they were both overwhelmed by 99-mph fastballs. They both struck out.</p><p>The Royals never really challenged after that. La Russa&#8217;s maneuvering helped the Cardinals add more runs &#8212; defensive replacement Tyler Greene homered, pinch hitter Khalil Greene delivered a two-run single in the eighth &#8212; and St. Louis won 5-0. When the game ended, I asked La Russa whether after all this time he has a sense for when he needs to turn up his managing and go for the victory.</p><p>He said: &#8220;There is always more than one moment. . . .That&#8217;s why we treat all our relief pitchers like stars.&#8221;