La Russa Won't Sully Hero Pilot's Name

JUPITER, Fla. -- St. Louis manager Tony La Russa has a phrase he likes to use when one of his players does something exceptional.

"I'll say, 'He Sullied it,'" La Russa said.

Going off the book definition, that doesn't sound like much of a compliment. But the capital "S" makes all the difference in the world.

In La Russa's world, "Sullied" is an acknowledgment of what Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger did back on Jan. 15, 2009, landing a US Airways plane on the Hudson River moments after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport without any loss of life.

La Russa was one of the millions who became fascinated with the story of how Sullenberger and co-pilot Jeff Skiles took their Airbus A320, disabled after striking a flock of geese, and landed the plane in the river despite having both engines knocked out. It was later that day that La Russa got a call from one of the executives at ARF, the Animal Rescue Foundation started by La Russa and his wife, Elaine.

"She told me, 'He's one of us,'" La Russa said recently in his spring training office.

It happened that Sullenberger and his family had long been ARF volunteers, taking in litters of kittens in their suburban Oakland home and weaning them until they were ready to be put up for adoption. One of those kittens, Jasmine, arrived in that way and never left.

Two days later, La Russa called, both to introduce himself and to offer his congratulations at the job Sullenberger and Skiles had done in bringing the 155 passengers and crew in safely with a minimum of injury.

Life had changed for Sullenberger, his wife, Lorrie, and their daughters, Kate and Kelly. La Russa seemed to have a strong grasp of the direction the new life would go.

"He just said he wished us well and wanted to offer the experience of having teenage girls while he was in national prominence and how he'd handled it," Sullenberger told FanHouse Friday morning from his East Bay home. "I was still in New York at the time, came home for one day, then the family left for the (Barack Obama) inauguration.

"At one point after that I called him back. I was amazed that someone of his stature was reaching out to me."

For his part, La Russa was amazed to have such a close connection with someone of Sullenberger's obvious skill and professionalism. ARF volunteers come from all segments of East Bay life, but until Jan 15, 2009, La Russa, as the third-winningest baseball manager of all-time, was the only one with national reputation.

"I've found out from talking to him that every action he took that day is exactly how he is as a person," La Russa said. "He'd read every page of the learning manual. It explains how he was able to do what he did.

"We teach here (with St. Louis) how to make pressure your friend, and I don't know that anyone has ever done that any better than Sully that day. When he described to me his reactions to what happened when the engines went -- it was classic to what you teach about handling pressure."



Sullenberger and La Russa had coffee a few times in an Alamo, Calif., coffee shop that both men favor, and the more they talked, the more La Russa's respect grew. He invited Sullenberger and his family to the All-Star Game in St. Louis last year, and Sullenberger was in the clubhouse meeting people he'd only read about.

"Being a friend of Tony's has a lot of perks," Sullenberger said with an easy laugh. "Many of the things that have happened have been the chance of a lifetime."

Curiously, that's the way La Russa describes Sullenberger's performance on that January day.

"He did what you have to do in important situations," La Russa said. "He concentrated on the job and not on anything else. That's what you have to do in every profession to be the best."

Sullenberger, who repeatedly said he was just "chosen by circumstances to be the public face of what happened," said he's been able to break down what happened in those fateful 208 seconds into three facets.

"It spite of me realizing that this was a dire emergency and the challenge of a lifetime, fighting for life in a crucible, I was first able through years of training to force calm on myself," he said. "Then I was able to impose order on the situation so that it became a problem I could deal with. We'd dealt with portions of what had happened, and I used those as building blocks and arranged those blocks in such a way as to get things done.

"The third thing I did was to know that I only had time to do a very few things. I had to do them, and do them well. That was the sole focus."

Sullenberger was only a casual baseball fan before what became known as the "Miracle on the Hudson," but his knowledge of the game has expanded greatly in the last 14 months.

Asked what he thinks of La Russa having morphed his name into a verb, Sullenberger just laughs.

"Well, it's just another way in which life has become surreal," he said. "You can't image until you experience it what has happened. It's hard to comprehend the overwhelming and sudden change that we as a family underwent. There is no training for that."

And Sullenberger says he's come to appreciate in a key batter-pitcher matchup late in a game the similarities to the situations that he and his fellow pilots face.

"If you focus on the process, the results will follow," he said. "And for Tony and especially for his hitters, that's the same. That's the focus. Do the two or three things you do very well and know that everything else is a mere distraction.

"We hear about hearing the roar of the crowd. Hear it as background noise and don't focus on it. That's what works."

La Russa says he tries to holds the Cardinals to the Sullenberger standard.

"He wound up being the one facing the big event," La Russa said. "What matters then is how you impact the events. What he did is a perfect example of what you teach. Focus."

Or you could just say he Sullied it.