LaRussa and Pujols attending Beck Rally?

St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa has chosen to publicly back Arizona’s odious, anti-constitutional, anti-immigrant Senate Bill 1070. Call me paranoid. Call me delusional. But it doesn’t take a tinfoil hat to intuit that there are larger forces at work shaping Major League Baseball’s political response to Arizona’s anti-immigrant attacks. When SB 1070 was signed by the state’s interim Governor Jan Brewer, baseball players were in an uproar. In a sport where half the league holds Spring Training in Arizona and 27% of players are Latin American immigrants, the reaction was bracing and immediate. Fifteen players lashed out against SB 1070 before the ink was even dry on Brewer’s signature. The Major League Baseball Players Association also issued a dramatic statement against the bill. Both Padres first baseman Adrian Gonzalez and White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said they would boycott the 2011 All Star game if it was held in Phoenix as planned. And then… silence. It’s been like a faucet that was twisted violently shut. Players now just speak off the record with curt statements like, "Who would like it?" Others who spoke out earlier like the D-backs own Augie Ojeda, now just mumble, "We're here to play baseball.

And into the vacuum steps Tony La Russa, loud and proud in front of the cameras saying, "I'm actually a supporter of what Arizona is doing. If the national government doesn't fix your problem, you've got a problem. You've got to fix it yourself. That's just part of the American way." He then praised the handful of Tea Partiers who attended Wednesday's Cardinals/Diamondbacks game with banners and signs in support of SB 1070. (emphasis added)

No comment from Cardinal stars Albert Pujols or Yadier Molina about whether getting stopped without just cause is “just part of the American way.”

As players are silenced while managers come forward to defend Bud Selig’s conservative status quo, the lessons should be clear. Players spoke out heroically when the law was past, but they will not magically build a real grassroots movement against SB 1070. That happens off the field. We need to keep pushing to pressure Commissioner Bud Selig to move next year’s All Star game, and La Russa may have unwittingly given us a lead on just how to do it. After praising the Tea Partiers’ in-park demonstration, he said, "Anybody, I mean if you had the opposite view and you wanted to come out and have your signs, I mean this is great, you're going to have 40,000 people here to see it perfect. I don't care.=