by Bryan Burwell bburwell@ post-dispatch.com 314-340-8185 , St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Most of the time, any agonizing has to do with management deciding whether to give the guy a gentle nudge out the door or a full-scale kick to the curb. In this silly season, general managers and owners spend exhausting hours trying to foresee the future or evaluate the not-so-distant past: Is this the guy who can turn things around or is this the guy who's already proved he's in way over his head? Is this the manager we really want in charge of our future, or is he nothing more than a temporary caretaker until a bigger, better deal comes along?

So consider the Cardinals the lucky ones. There's no guesswork involved in assessing Tony La Russa's managerial bona fides. They already know what this future Hall of Fame skipper brings to the table - teams that play a hard nine, are usually in the playoff hunt and deliver a trip or two or three to the World Series.

So it's not about what's on their minds.

It's all about what's brewing in La Russa's head and heart.

They want him back, and why shouldn't they?

And hopefully later today the 65-year-old La Russa will pick up the phone and give Cardinals Chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. and GM John Mozeliak some good news. Most of us believe that La Russa will say that his emotional and physical batteries are properly re-energized and that the third-winningest manager in Baseball history will be back on that top dugout step for the 2010 season.

There are no emotional wrestling matches going on in management about La Russa. They know everything that has made him one of the most effective managers in Baseball hasn't changed. The Cardinals were the team of the decade in the National League because La Russa knows how to motivate men. You can second-guess him all day long about his day-to-day in-game strategies, but I'll take his r?sum? over yours. Over the long haul, he has proved to be worthy of his big salary and bigger reputation. This guy knows how to manage and motivate. His message is just as effective now as it was in 2006 or 2004 or 2001. If he spent a week, a day or an hour wondering if his message is still being heard by the men in his clubhouse, his answer to the Cardinals shouldn't be too hard to find.

This was a team that last April few figured would be anywhere near the top of the NL Central standings. Yet even before the big summer trades for Mark DeRosa, Julio Lugo and Matt Holliday, La Russa kept his overachieving Cardinals in or near first place.

What he achieved with this team through the all-star break was arguably his finest managerial work. And once he was handed the extra firepower, La Russa drove them to a runaway sprint to the division crown, even if they simply ran out of gas at the end.

If I were a betting man, my money is on La Russa to return to manage the Cardinals . It will be fun to watch how he simply massages his message to fit the next crop of talent that Mozeliak helps assemble around the all-star cornerstones of MVP Albert Pujols, Chris Carpenter, Adam Wainwright, Yadier Molina and Ryan Ludwick. If Holliday takes the free-agent money and runs, there will be someone else for La Russa to push and prod.

This is what La Russa does. He pushes emotional buttons. It is hard work for the players who take his lead, but it is also a grind on the man who sits in that manager's office for 162 games as well.

If you saw the exhausted look on La Russa's face on that Saturday night in Busch a few weeks ago when the Cardinals were eliminated from the NLDS, you would be able to understand how much he invests in this game. But if you saw him after a May, June or August loss, it is the same tortured expression.

La Russa cares. He hates losing more than he loves winning. It's why he needs to take that extra time every October to evaluate whether or not he's willing to put himself through that emotional grind for another year.

The Cardinals are going to be a good team next year. When you start out every season with Pujols, Carpenter and Wainwright, that is more than enough incentive to lure back anyone who still has the passion burning in his competitive belly. Whatever discomfort La Russa did have with this organization in the past seemed to have dissipated with the aggressive trade activity after the All-Star break.

At this stage in his managerial life, La Russa is in no mood for the kind of heavy lifting involved in the complete overhaul of a franchise. That is for young men with time on their hands. He wants to keep on compiling victories and chasing championships, or at least know that there's tangible evidence that competing for titles is a reasonable expectation.

The Cardinals are that right team at the right time. La Russa has to know that.

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