JUPITER, Fla. — Cardinals manager Tony La Russa promised the assembled fourth estate a juicy scoop for report day, and he would have delivered, too — had his pitching coach not apparently threatened him with harm.

See, La Russa had planned to christen a new closer.

“Chris Carpenter,” the manager said.

You should have seen Dave Duncan’s expression.

With Carpenter at his locker and La Russa addressing a handful of media types, the manager explained that trainers had told him that Carpenter wouldn’t be ready for 100-110 pitches until the middle of the season. But 30 … now, 30 pitches he would be “ready to throw on opening day,” La Russa said. So, he decided that Jason Isringhausen will shift to setup and Carpenter will be the featured closer, throwing no more than 30 pitches and pulling a Joba — working his way into the starting rotation from the very back of the bullpen.

Gearing up to start a game by finishing them for awhile, La Russa said.

Turns out the manager’s plot had little to do with rehab. It was about revenge.

The manager said his offseason ended with a bang. Actually, several of them. Ear-ringing ones, too. In the past week, he saw the Foo Fighters and Velvet Revolver, even going backstage at one concert to meet guitar hero himself, Slash. But the concert he really wanted to send his wife to was across the pond. The one a member of his staff went to with his wife. The one Isringhausen got them tickets to:

The Led Zeppelin reunion concert in London.

Bullpen coach Marty Mason and his wife attended the one-time event, at the invitation of Isringhausen. La Russa was … jealous.

Now he’s plotting.

“I was going to anoint (Carpenter) the closer and Izzy would be his setup man,” La Russa said. ”The reason I was going to do that is that he had two tickets to Led Zeppelin that he game to Marty and Mrs. Mason instead of Tony and Mrs. La Russa. And I was on my way out of the office to do that before Dunc hurt me.”

La Russa joked that Isringhausen wouldn’t get the primo veteran throw times, that he’s looking at late afternoon tosses from the mound. That the closer can take his iPod, load up with all the Zeppelin it can handle and trudge out there for some lengthy mornings shagging flies. And that mending Carpenter will be the closer.

Or, would have been had Duncan not interceded, La Russa said.

“What he does unto me I’m going to do it unto him,” La Russa said of Isringhausen. ”As far as I’m concerned, with Carp, I was just going to give him the job. But now it will be wide open. If Russ (Springer) or Ryan (Franklin) want go by him, or Chris Perez or somebody — they can have it.”

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On a far less joking note, La Russa said he didn’t watch all of the hearings in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday but while running errands during his last day at home he did hear plenty of the testimony from Roger Clemens and others. Asked if he felt hearings like Wednesday’s and the hearings three years ago were necessary, La Russa said:

“I thought it was pretty compelling. It wasn’t pretty. It was just compelling. I think the message that Congress is sending is the one that fans want to hear: No tolerance. Zero tolerance. Baseball get your act together. It’s like a triangle there — it’s the owners, it’s Major League Baseball and it’s the players’ association. If all three of them pull together then we straighten it out. If one of the three is reluctant to get involved and be as stringent as we have to get them we’re going to have issues.”

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Brendan Ryan joined the major-league side of the clubhouse for the first time this spring training, and he said he’s here early “because I don’t want to give them any reason to move me back to the other side of the room.” Ryan arrived Thursday and stepped into the clubhouse initially looking for the No. 75 jersey hanging somewhere.

Having logged major-league time last year, he’s graduated to No. 13.

And he’s moved into the high-rent district in the clubhouse, a couple lockers down from Albert Pujols and near the likes of Troy Glaus and Aaron Miles. He said he felt it was important to arrive early and start working out with the other early ‘Birds “to show how much I want to be on this team.”  

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Mike Matheny and Cal Eldred are among the spring training instructors who came by the facility Thursday. La Russa said a selling point for Jason La Rue when the Cardinals approached the backup catcher was having Matheny around during spring training. La Rue told La Russa that “he never played a game against the Cardinals with Matheny catching that he didn’t study Mike Matheny.”

“Big advantage for us,” La Russa said.

***

MiLB.com has a story on former Cardinals farmhand Bobby Slaybaugh. The lefthanded pitcher lost an eye in an on-field accident during spring training 1952, but he returned three months later to the mound to throw a shutout for one of the Cardinals’ minor-league affiliates. A snippet from the article: 

Despite being stricken as a youngster with rheumatic fever, which for a time confined him to a wheelchair, Slaybaugh never gave up hope of playing professional baseball.

That he had already overcome his illness and become a successful pitcher was somewhat of a miracle in itself. The Sporting News labeled him “a little left-hander with unusual control” in its March 12, 1952 issue. The talk around the St. Louis camp was that Slaybaugh had the talent to make an impact in the Major Leagues. But that was before he took the mound on the March 24 to pitch batting practice to the Cardinals’ reserves.

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