ST. LOUIS — Tony La Russa’s beef with the Tweets has been settled.

The St. Louis Cardinals manager said this afternoon that his lawsuit against the San Francisco-based social media site, Twitter.com, has been settled out of court. La Russa and his representative sued Twitter, Inc., in early May for trademark infringement, cybersquatting and misappropriation of name and likeness. La Russa confirmed Friday that the suit was settled. Damages would likely consist of covering legal feels and “maybe something for ARF in there,” La Russa said.

ARF is the Animal Rescue Foundation, La Russa’s charity and animal shelter.

La Russa said Gregory L. McCoy, the president of ARF’s Board of Directors and also La Russa’s family attorney, settled the suit. Paperwork was filed to that effect in San Francisco on Friday.

“The biggest misconception … was that it was about somebody using Twitter to be critical of me,” La Russa said. “I have plenty of critics. You can’t sue everybody who is criticizing you. That seemed like the perception — that I or we were upset with the criticism. No, it was the improper use of the name.”

The Cardinals’ manager’s key issue was what he called “the unauthorized use” of his name. La Russa did not say what would be done with the fake page, which carried a domain name of www.twitter.com/TonyLaRussa.

It’s likely that page will remain under ARF control for the charity’s use.

The fake page was taken out of circulation on Twitter.com when the lawsuit was filed in San Francisco in early May. Before Twitter.com scrubbed the page it included several “Tweets” — the 140-character or less updates that are the backbone of the site — that were critical of La Russa by way of direct or indirect references to Cardinals pitchers Darryl Kile and Josh Hancock, both of whom died while active.

Twitter.com has not returned several emails requesting comment over the past few days. A phone call seeking comment was not returned.

The site has become a raging fad — it’s on the cover of this week’s Time magazine for “changing the way we live.” The site allows users a chance to use microblogs to update their activities. News services have used it to break news and push readers toward their coverage. Professional athletes have also taken to the site as a way to communicate with fans. CNN and actor Ashton Kutcher had a celebrated bet on who could reach 1 million followers first on Twitter.

Twitter has a policy against impersonation, though it does not reject what it calls “parody impersonations.”

La Russa said of the donation to ARF that comes as a result of the suit: “It’s not going to be too ridiculous.”

The original coverage at The Post-Dispatch about the lawsuit can be found here:

• At Bird Land: “Tony La Russa suing Twitter for trademark infringement”.
• At StlToday.com: “St. Louis Cardinals’ manager sues Twitter”.

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