The biggest baseball news of the day is that Tony La Russa announced his retirement as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals.

It was announced in a press conference on Monday morning.

“I think this just feels like it’s time to end it,” the 67-year-old La Russa said at a news conference at Busch Stadium.

Unlike the World Series celebration, tickets were not sold for the event.

La Russa leaves the game at third on the all-time managerial wins list, with 2,728. He’s 35 behind John McGraw, but never considered returning for one more season simply to surpass him.

“I’m aware of the history of the game, but I would not be happy with myself if the reason I came back was to move up one spot,” La Russa said.

Over his career, La Russa won three World Series titles: Oakland in 1989, St. Louis in 2006, and St. Louis again in 2011.

I have mixed feelings about his leaving. He’s a guy that’s fun to hate on, given his love of being a part of the game. Of course, he will be hard for the Cardinals to replace. For all of La Russa’s faults, he delivered. And his leaving will make the Cardinals a weaker team, which as a Reds fan, has both positives and negatives.

Still, it has been fun while it lasted. Without La Russa, I doubt this Cardinals-Reds rivalry would be where it is. I can only hope the next manager will keep things going.

The St. Louis Cardinals, as many of you know, made it past the Philadelphia Phillies, despite being an inferior club. My feelings on this are largely frustration at the missed opportunity by the Cincinnati Reds and embarrassment by the General Manager who refused to do anything. The Reds should have done what the Cardinals did, and that sucks.

But this next playoff series is clear. The good guys are the Brewers, and the bad guys are the Cardinals. And the Brewers dislike the Cardinals as much as the Reds do.

Speaking to reporters at Miller Park on Saturday, [Zack] Greinke said some of his Brewers teammates don’t like Cardinals ace Chris Carpenter when he shouts at batters from the mound.

“They think his presence, his attitude out there sometimes is like a phony attitude,” Greinke said. “And then he yells at people. He just stares people down and stuff. And most pitchers just don’t do that. And when guys do, I guess some hitters get mad. Some hitters do it to pitchers. But when you do that some people will get mad.

“There’s other pitchers in the league that do it, but, I don’t know,” Greinke said, “a lot of guys on our team don’t like Carpenter.”

Amen. And for a primer on the dislike between the two clubs and the whining the Brewers have received from the Cardinals, I recommend this primer.

From complaints of scoreboards in the stadium to benches emptying altercations, there’s some similarity between the Brewers-Cardinals this year and the Reds-Cardinals last year. Given that there’s only one constant, it makes it easy to root for the Brewers to knock out the Cardinals.

Boxscore

Fresh off sweeping the Milwaukee Brewers, the St. Louis Cardinals must have thought they had a chance at actually re-entering the playoff race. Especially with the Cincinnati Reds coming to town and Chris Carpenter on the mound.

But Reds manager Dusty Baker did something unexpected: he actually played the young players general manager Walt Jocketty had just called up when rosters expanded. And the youth movement exploded for some runs off Carpenter and the St. Louis bullpen.

Three new guys hit home runs to lead the Reds to their 11-8 victory: Todd Frazier had a solo shot in the 6th, Yonder Alonso had a 2-run shot in the 7th, and Juan Francisco had a 3-run shot to put the game away in the 9th.

Johnny Cueto had another bad start for the Reds and lost his ERA lead in the process, which is troubling, but the offense bailed him out. And the Reds helped hammer on that nail in the Cardinals’ season. Maybe tomorrow they can drive it in a little deeper.

ESPN is reporting a complicated trade that’s resulted in, among other things, the addition of Corey Patterson to the St. Louis Cardinals’ roster:

CHICAGO — The Chicago White Sox traded pitcher Edwin Jackson and utilityman Mark Teahen to the Toronto Blue Jays.

The White Sox will receive reliever Jason Frasor and pitching prospect Zach Stewart.

A short time later Wednesday, the Blue Jays turned around and traded Jackson to the St. Louis Cardinals in an eight player deal that netted Toronto Colby Rasmus, sources told ESPN The Magazine’s Buster Olney.

The Cards sent Rasmus Trever Miller, Brian Tallet and P.J. Walters to the Jays for Jackson, Marc Rzepczynski, Octavio Dotel and Corey Patterson.

The clear winner in this trade is, of course, Colby Rasmus, who finally gets to escape from under the malevolent thumb of Tony LaRussa.