Hall of Fame Cardinals Manager Whitey Herzog Dies at 92
Whitey Herzog, the Hall of Fame manager who led the St. Louis Cardinals to three pennants and a World Series championship in the 1980s, died Monday in St. Louis. He was 92 and was the oldest Hall of Famer after Willie Mays.
His death was announced by the cardinals.
“Baseball has been good to me since I quit,” Herzog liked to say.
Signed by the Yankees in 1949, he never made it out of their minor league system, though he picked up a lifetime of baseball knowledge from manager Casey Stengel during spring training camps. He played the outfield for four American League teams for eight seasons with only modest success.
But Herzog found his niche as a manager in what came to be known as Whiteyball, building teams with speed, defense and pitching to take advantage of stadiums with fast turf and large outfields, first at Royals Stadium in Kansas City and later at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.
Herzog led the Kansas City Royals to three consecutive American League division championships in the 1970s, then led the Cardinals to the 1982 World Series title with a team he built while also general manager. And he led the Cardinals to pennants in 1985 and 1987.
In 2009, he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee.
“The fundamental aspects of the game were some of the things he always emphasized,” Cardinals Hall of Fame shortstop Ozzie Smith once said. “It just came down to the way he prepared us for the game.”
But for all his knowledge of baseball, Herzog looked beyond Whiteyball in developing a bond with his players.
As Cardinals reliever and Hall of Famer Bruce Sutter once told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “How many managers can you ruin a game for and then go fishing with him the next morning?
Dorrel Norman Elvert Herzog was born on November 9, 1931, in New Athens, Ill., about 30 miles southeast of St. Louis, the son of Edgar and Lietta Herzog. His father was a brewery worker. (The nickname Whitey came from his light blond hair.)
As a boy, Whitey would sometimes skip school to visit Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis and watch the Yankees play the St. Louis Browns (the team later became the Baltimore Orioles).
Herzog was signed by the Yankees out of high school, but they waived him after a long apprenticeship in the minors and traded him to the Washington Senators in 1956. He also played for the Kansas City Athletics, the Orioles and the Detroit Tigers. He played in 634 major league games with a career batting average of .257.
After two seasons with the Athletics, first as a scout and then as a coach, Herzog joined the Mets in 1966 as their third-base coach. He was scouted for them in 1967 and subsequently oversaw their farm system for five years.
Herzog was named manager of the Texas Rangers in 1973, taking over a fledgling ball club, but was fired in early September when the team was in last place in the American League West. He became coach for the California Angels in 1974, serving four games as interim manager during a management change.
He replaced Jack McKeon as manager of the Royals midway through the 1975 season and went on to lead them to the AL West title in the next three seasons, losing both times to the Yankees in the League Championship Series.
He considered his 1977 team the best he ever managed. It finished the regular season at 102-60, with speedy players like Fred Patek, Frank White and Amos Otis, the hitting of George Brett and the pitching of Dennis Leonard.
Herzog was fired after the Royals finished second in their division in 1979 and was named manager of the Cardinals in June 1980. He was also given the job of general manager in late August, when he turned the reins over to Red Schoendienst.
He regained the managerial job in 1981 and remained general manager until early in the 1982 season, when the team he assembled in a series of deals captured the Cardinals’ first pennant since 1968.
That ball club, with Smith at shortstop, Keith Hernandez at first base, Willie McGee, Lonnie Smith and George Hendrick in the outfield, Darrell Porter at catcher and Sutter’s relief pitching, then defeated the Milwaukee Brewers in a seven-game matchup . World series.
After leading the Cardinals to two more pennants, Herzog resigned on July 6, 1990, with his team in last place in the National League East. He then worked as an executive with the Angels.
He is survived by his wife of 71 years, Mary Lou Herzog; their three children, Debra, David and Jim; nine grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, the Cardinals said.
Herzog never forgot his baseball roots, especially the wisdom Stengel imparted when Herzog was a Yankee hopeful.
“Casey broke it down into a hundred little things that would make a difference,” Herzog recalled in “You’re Missin’ a Great Game,” written with Jonathan Pitts. “Once I started coaching and managing, I kept passing them on to my own players, to everyone from the youngest rookie-league bushwhackers to the George Bretts, Ozzie Smiths and Vince Colemans of the world. In Casey, I had an Einstein.”
Stengel could talk about every facet of baseball, but Herzog recalled that one piece of advice Stengel gave had nothing to do with strategy.
As Herzog once told The New York Times: “Casey told me, ‘Let them ask you one question and keep talking so they won’t ask you another.’”
Victor Mather contributed to the reporting.
