Tony La Russa: Man on a Mission

Players and fans love him or hate him, so it's surprising that people know very little about St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa's life; this biography goes behind the scenes of one of the most iconic figures in baseball today to show the influences behind his intensity and uncompromising focus, why winning every game possible is important to him, and why he often puts the game ahead of his private and personal life. Including interviews with past and current players, managers, executives, and even La Russa himself and intensive research from newspapers, magazines, and other archive material, the book reconstructs La Russa's life from his days as a young boy growing up in Tampa, where he spoke Spanish before he learned English, to his standing as the third-winningest manager in baseball history.

Rob Rains is a freelance writer, an adjunct professor in the school of communications at Webster University, and a former writer for United Press International, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and USA Today Baseball Weekly. He is the author or coauthor of 25 books and is a lifetime member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and the Baseball Writers Association of America. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri. Joe Buck is a play-by-play sportscaster for Fox who has won numerous Sports Emmy Awards.