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Tony La Russa’s list of acquaintances is a cornucopia of cultural oddities.  Bobby Knight,  Bill Parcells, Billy Bob Thornton, to name a few.  And while the Skipper’s list of celebrity bromances ranges across a wide array of interesting genres, he’s always laid favor to the music industry.  Sammy Hagar from Van Halen.  Steve Perry from Journey.  Huey Lewis from, well, you get the picture.

Large in part, La Russa’s musical preference lies in the 70′s and 80′s mainstream rock.  But every now and then, he throws a curve call (+2 blogging points for baseball pun).  Like, last night, when he promptly departed from the Cardinals 4-2 win against Milwaukee to attend the Carlos Santana concert at the Fox Theater.

But oh, he didn’t just attend…

That’s right.  That’s the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals playing a handful of maracas as a member of Carlos Santana’s band.  We’ve seen La Russa pose with pooches.  Heck, we’ve even seen him dress up as some weird Grim Reaper kitten.  But back-up percussion for a Latin rock band?  Yep, we’ve seen it all.

La Russa’s rolodex should be treated like the Dead Sea Scrolls; while extremely confusing to the untrained eye, collegiate-level program should study it for generations so we can fully understood its significance.

(HT: @bweixlmann)

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