"To manage, or to not manage. That is the question."

Once again, our little burg in the Great Flyover waits with bated breath as Tony La Hamlet ponders his future — should he return to St. Louis to manage the Cardinals for another season?

The very fact that the question requires such intense introspection is proof that La Hamlet exists on a higher plane than do the rest of us. For most working people, any debate about staying at a job centers on two simple questions: How's the pay? Is the work unpleasant?

In La Hamlet's case, I'd say the pay is fine. The two-year contract that just expired was worth about $4.25 million a year. If you space that out over 52 weeks — in other words, we're going to count the off-season as paid vacation — La Hamlet was making a bit more than $81,000 a week. That's not counting pension credits, benefits, meal money or anything else. Just the straight salary. More than $11,000 a day, seven days a week.

Is the work unpleasant?

This is a much tougher question. From the outside, managing a major league baseball team seems like a dream job. You fly from city to city on chartered planes. You stay in the finest hotels. You eat at the finest restaurants. You start your workday in the clubhouse and then you walk out on to the manicured grass of the baseball field to watch batting practice. Then you manage the team during the game.

I say that sounds like a dream job to outsiders, but the truth is, it is apparently a dream job to a lot of insiders. After all, hardly any of them ever quit. Most of them hang around until they get fired, and then they try to get hired by another team.

Furthermore, many managers seem happy in their work. Charlie Manuel of the Philadelphia Phillies comes to mind. He seems to smile a lot. I heard him interviewed after his team lost a game, and he said something like, "I wish we would have won, but it was a great game."

Then again, Manuel does not seem to realize how difficult it is to manage a baseball team. The sportswriters tell me he figures out a lineup early in the season and pretty much sticks with it as long as his team is doing well. It doesn't seem to matter whether his team is facing a left-handed pitcher or a right-handed pitcher.

That is not La Hamlet's way. In the 162 games of the regular season this year, he used 136 different lineups. I have no idea how he figures these things out. If a left-hander is pitching against the Cardinals on a day when the wind is blowing from right to left and the temperature is between 75 and 82, he will use one lineup. If it is mostly cloudy, he will use another. It is extremely difficult, very complicated.

Perhaps that is why he never smiles. You can see him in the dugout, wearing his dark glasses even at night, always scowling.

I sometimes wonder about his unhappiness. Does he not understand what hard work is? I remember visiting a hog farmer in Illinois. He told me he visited Branson for a weekend several years ago. It was the last time he had a weekend off, he said. "You work every weekend?" I asked. He gave me a strange look. "The hogs don't know it's Saturday," he said.

Oddly enough, the hog farmer did not seem unhappy.

Then again, the hog farmer does not have to wear a baseball uniform. That is the only downside I can see to being a baseball manager. Anybody over 50 looks ludicrous in a baseball uniform. Other sports do not make their managers or coaches wear uniforms. Perhaps they should. It might be fun to see St. Louis University basketball coach Rick Majerus come running on to the court in shorts.

Perhaps it is the uniform that bothers La Hamlet.

What else could it be? He is a celebrity in a culture that worships celebrity. Bruce Springsteen comes to town, and you don't have a ticket? Forget about tickets. You're backstage.

A restaurant owner once told me that La Hamlet sometimes came to his restaurant after a night game. The place would be ready to close when La Hamlet would arrive. Did the restaurant owner mind? Good heavens, no. He would keep the kitchen open when the Cardinals played at night in case La Hamlet might come. He was thrilled to have him as a customer.

The fans are adoring, too. When La Hamlet took the lineup card out to the umpires in spring training the morning after he got a DWI, he received a standing ovation.

Speaking of spring training, perhaps that's another indignity. After November, December and January off, you have to go to Florida in February.

No wonder Tony La Hamlet is tortured.