Bryan Burwell

Back in the early spring, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa had a hunch. Unlike so many other springs past when the future Hall of Fame manager would just show up to spring training to do a little fine tuning on a legitimate pennant contender, La Russa showed up in Jupiter, Fla. to do some heavy lifting.

He had a team full of question marks. These Cardinals hoped they could contend. They thought they belonged. They prayed all those rehabilitating arms on their Island of Misfit Toy pitching staff would magically heal in time to allow this team to compete in the NL Central. All the TV talking heads and baseball wise guys thought this was bad news. They predicted a gloom-and-doom scenario that would end up with the National League’s most successful franchise spending most of the season in the basement of the NL Central.

Yet on this splendid Florida morning, La Russa stood out in the far left-field corner of Roger Dean Stadium practice field with his familiar red fungo bat tucked under his arm like a drum major’s baton and he was unconcerned.

“A lot of the positions in these games are being manned by guys who are playing for their lives,” he said. “They’re fighting to see how many at-bats they can get, how many innings will they pitch. I’m not blowing smoke. I’m optimistic, and here’s the difference. If I said right now that we’re as good a club as there is in baseball that would be nonsense, because we’ve done nothing to establish that. But here’s what I do know: We’re going to play hard enough. I just don’t know if we’re going to play good enough. We’ll have to wait to see how that all works out. But I can tell you this: Playing hard enough can be a very attractive thing.”

Three months later, that “playing hard” instinct has indeed turned into a very attractive thing. La Russa’s Redbirds are not only in first place in the NL Central with the second-best record in baseball (22-12 entering Wednesday night in Colorado), but are without question the biggest surprise team in baseball. A year ago, they didn’t reach 20 victories until May 25, but this year’s team breezed by 20 victories on May 1 with two hot streaks (a 12-5 start and an 8-2 mark over the last 10 games) sandwiched between a 2-5 sputter.

Yet in a sport that seems overly obsessed with baffling numbers and exotic statistics to support even the most obvious fact, these high-flying Cardinals do not need numbers to explain what they’re doing. The secret to St. Louis’ success are in these three simple words:

They play hard.

Every night, every inning, every pitch, every play. This is a team that was built to make a manager look good. No matter what the score, no matter if they are up by five runs or down by nine, they play like their jobs depend on it, which they actually do. What La Russa said in spring training is now his daily mantra with a clubhouse full of players who want playing time and value the opportunities to get their names on the manager’s daily lineup card.

“That’s slam dunk stuff,” said La Russa last week. “You just look at the people we have here. They’re pushing each other for playing time. I still don’t know how good we are, but I know how hard we’re going to play.”

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