He figures to return for his 10th season in St. Louis.

"I'll tell you what, if we win the world championship, I'll manage for free," La Russa said. "And I'm not laughing. You can write it. It's the truth."

This is La Russa's 10th trip to the postseason, and he's savoring it.

"Part of the enjoyment of this thing is to every once in a while look around and check the scene out," La Russa said. "It's such a wonderful experience and it's such a treat to be a part of it.

"But you'd better just do that a little bit. You'd be a fool to not understand everything that goes on with it."

MISSING CARPENTER: It's looking less likely that St. Louis Cardinals 15-game winner Chris Carpenter will pitch in the postseason. The Cardinals have been without Carpenter since Sept. 18 - the day they clinched the NL Central - when he was sidelined with nerve damage in his right biceps.

Trainer Barry Weinberg said Carpenter, who would have been the team's Game 1 starter, had made "little improvements but nothing significant enough to start throwing."

"He'd have to get back to normal and he's not normal," Weinberg added.

The injury is rare for baseball players, so the Cardinals have no idea when he'll be able to pitch.

"You don't have any past experience," Weinberg said. "We're going to be the test case. At the end of this we'll tell you how long it was."

MIGRAINES: Boston Red Sox center fielder Johnny Damon is having a recurrence of migraine headaches that first bothered him after a collision in last year's playoffs.

Damon is not expected to miss any playing time.

"The first two months of the offseason, I had migraines every day," he said Thursday, an off-day in Boston's AL division series against the Anaheim Angels. "I started having them again last night."

Damon collided with second baseman Damian Jackson when both raced for a popup during the first-round series against Oakland last season. Jackson was on the ground a few minutes, but an unconscious Damon was there for nine.

He missed the first two games of last year's ALCS against the New York Yankees and, after getting three hits in Game 3, went 1-for-17 the rest of the way. But the injury doesn't seem to have affected him this year, when he batted .304 with 20 homers and 94 RBI.

"Physically, I'm all right," Damon said. "I just have that headache thing again."

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