The White Rat

The great history of the Cardinals loses another legend

I was hoping to get to this space today to write a little bit about the neat connections that St. Louis and Oakland have had over the last almost 30 years. You could trace the resurgence of the Cardinals on the national scene to the team by the bay, as Walt Jocketty and Tony LaRussa brought in what seemed like half of the 1996 team that was one win short of the World Series from the A’s. The next year saw Mark McGwire move from green and gold to red and white. We—and by we, I mean I—sometimes forget that Matt Holliday actually came from Oakland, not Colorado. There’s an interesting web of connection for two teams that not only are in different leagues but have only played each other a handful of times and never in the postseason (in this incarnation—of course the two organizations met up before the Athletics started their westward progression.)

Going into that might have been a fun little post but the news from this morning overshadowed anything that might go on the field. Whitey Herzog, the architect of one of the most beloved eras of Cardinal baseball, passed away overnight at the age of 92.

It’s hard to imagine anyone that has made a more complete mark on the organization, outside of Red Schoendienst, than Whitey. When you read about his time with the Cardinals, the first thing that you are struck with is how impossible it would be for it to happen today. Imagine if Bill DeWitt Jr. had hired Oli Marmol then, after a couple of months, let someone else manage while Oli did the GM duties, allowing him to wheel and deal and construct the team he wanted, then Oli moved back into the manager seat to run the team he’d put together. No matter your opinion on Marmol, that would never happen. The game is significantly different than it was almost 45 years ago when Whitey first came to town.

The fact that it couldn’t happen today probably helps the legend of Whitey Herzog be a little larger than life. Not that the legend needs a lot of burnishing. Whiteyball was unlike anything else that was going on in baseball at that time and, while there have been imitators, nobody has completely gone as full throttle with a focus on speed, defense, and a good bullpen in the years after. The running rabbits overcame their lack of power to defeat the slugging Milwaukee Brewers in the 1982 World Series and might have had two others had Don Denkinger made the right call and if Minnesota hadn’t played in a dome with controllable air conditioning. It was a glorious time to be a Cardinals fan.

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There is something about the decade of the ‘80s that has lasted in the imagination and culture of America. Every generation fondly remembers its youth, of course, but the ‘80s seem to have cast a spell well beyond those that grew up in it. Many of the intellectual properties from that time have either returned or never left. One of the biggest shows of the past decade, Stranger Things, is set there. The ‘80s were easily definable in ways that succeeding decades weren’t.

That’s the case with Whiteyball as well. The Cardinals of the mid-2000s were possibly the best collection of talent that has ever been assembled wearing the birds on the bat. There was a NL pennant, an NLCS berth, and a World Series winner within three years. The Tony La Russa era produced as many pennants, one more Series, and a higher winning percentage than Whitey’s time but it isn’t quite held in the same regard.

Of course, TLR won playing basically (save for when the pitcher hit eighth) the same game that other teams were playing. Whitey was doing his own thing and that’s always going to have some more cache. Tape measure home runs are fun but speed….there’s just something about speed. About a pitcher desperately trying to keep a runner close, a catcher making a great throw, and the runner being safe anyway. How a single can mean a speedster’s in scoring position. How a ball in the gap has the potential for three bases….or more.

Whitey Herzog understood all of that. He understood that Busch Stadium’s large dimensions made it impossible to rely on power but the artificial turf (talk about park effects!) allowed balls to scoot throw or bounce high enough for fast runners to be safe. It also allowed for truer plays for the defense, something that Ozzie Smith and company took full advantage of. A generation of Cardinal fans grew up on speedsters and double plays. It’s no wonder they cling to that even when the game has moved on. Given the current rule changes, it’s possible that the game will return to them.

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Vince Coleman had an OBP of .320 or less in his four seasons in St. Louis. It seems hard to imagine a team would allow a player like that at the top of their lineup regularly in 2024. (Ironically his best offensive year, steals not included, was the miserable 1990 season we’ve had recent reason to revisit.) Trying to win with only one major power threat in your lineup is a really hard thing to do these day. Ballparks are smaller. Artificial turf is mainly gone. While fans continue to clamor for it, it’s questionable how strong Whiteyball would be today.

Then again, they’ve changed engagement rules. They’ve made the bases bigger. What would peak Whitey do with Jordan Walker, Masyn Winn, and Victor Scott II? Could Whitey have adapted his style to the game of today and come up with a dangerous hybrid of speed and power? Would he be willing to run even with guys like Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado in the box?

It’s also fair to wonder if the era of larger-than-life managers is gone. Who is the biggest one now, Craig Counsell? He’s known around the game and the Cubs made a big push for him this winter, but his personality isn’t large and he’s not associated with doing one thing just wonderfully. He’s a manager of people, he’s got solid tactics, and he works well with the front office. You don’t hear people talking about “Counsellball” or anything like that. The job of the manager is as much dealing with media and players than anything on the field these days. Would Whitey be willing to listen when a couple of the analytics folks came down and told him it’d be better if a Coleman hit eighth or ninth? Would he be willing to deal with a press conference after every game on TV? You don’t think of platitudes when it comes to Whitey so Jim Hayes might have had his hands full.

Whitey wrote a couple of books (or at least told them to writers who put them to paper, though surprisingly not to Rob Rains). In You’re Missing a Great Game, a copy of which I have somewhere in my house, Whitey thought that the modern game wasn’t teaching the fundamentals, that the expanded playoffs rewarded mediocrity, and plenty of other things I’d likely agree with being an old curmudgeon myself. I don’t think he was all doom and gloom about baseball today—he made it out to a number of games—but it’s fair to remember that he quit in the middle of the 1990 season because he wasn’t motivating his players, in part because they were looking forward to free agency. The money is astronomical compared to what it was back then. It’s a different time. While some of the parts of Whiteyball could work today, I don’t think the whole package could.

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Win a World Series in St. Louis and you are always going to be a legend. Being from the area, Whitey seemed to soak up that adoration and respect. Even just a couple of weeks ago, obviously frailer than he’d been, he received a warm ovation at the home opener. He was always willing to talk baseball with those around him and those chats will be missed by the Cardinal managers, I have no doubt.

Stan Musial passed away in 2013. Red Schoendienst left us in 2018. Lou Brock and Bob Gibson died in 2020. We’re losing those players and people that were larger than life. Ozzie Smith is still with us and hopefully will be for a while (he turns 70 the day after Christmas this year) but he, La Russa, and Ted Simmons are the only retired numbers still with us. One of the great things about the Cardinals is how they’ve always had the legends still around, still connecting to the current generation. That’s starting to get a lot weaker.

Sure, there are more coming up. The retired number wall is likely to grow with Albert Pujols, Yadier Molina, and perhaps Adam Wainwright. Hopefully they take up the mantle of being involved with the organization (well, at least after Albert’s contract with the Angels is up) and provide that larger-than-life presence for the generations that are just now starting to embrace baseball. It won’t be quite the same, though. Things never are, I guess. They can be worse, they can be better.

What we can say is that we’ll never see the like of Dorrel Norman Elvert Herzog again. The organization and the game are poorer for it.