The St. Louis Cardinals and Milwaukee Brewers matchups turned into a pretty heated rivalry in 2011 when the two teams fought all year in the National League Central and then for six games in the NLCS last October. Any ill feelings between the two managers should simmer down as both Tony La Russa and Ron Roenicke will be on the bench together leading the National League in the 2012 All-Star game in Kansas City.
In the midst of all the drama of 24 head to head matchups, there were bean balls thrown at Ryan Braun and Albert Pujols, La Russa accusing the Brewers of manipulating the lighting at Miller Park, a near-fight between Nyjer Morgan and Chris Carpenter, followed by Morgan tweeting and calling Pujols “Alberta,” and Zack Greinke calling Chris Carpenter a “phony.”
Roenicke is ready to put all of that behind as he was asked to join La Russa and his 2011 staff to help out at this year’s Mid-summer Classic. “It’s hard when you’re going so hard against a guy the year before, and now you’re going to be on the same side with him, but it should be fun. We had some battles last year, yes. I’ll leave it at that,” Roenicke said. “I talked about it, yes, and we’re going to talk some more about it.”
Read more from Adam McCalvy of MLB.com.