Give Whitey Credit for His Two Miracles in St. Louis

Give the Rat his due. Whitey Herzog may know baseball better than anybody else.

It’s one thing to take over a last-place team and turn it into a World Series winner in 28 months, as Herzog did in St. Louis in 1982. It’s quite another to have that champion fall apart so quickly and so badly that you have to replace 18 of your 25 players and do the whole blasted job over again.

Few thought Herzog could revive the Cardinals in the first place. That he would resurrect them twice, and manage it so quickly, is a thing only he could have done. The task fit the man exactly.

Let’s join Dorrell Norman Elvert Herzog--Whitey to baseball fans, The White Rat to his friends, and just Rat to his St. Louis players--as he tells Richie Ashburn a story.

How Herzog weaves the tale, the details he appreciates and the ironic core that appeals to him in the parable, tells volumes about why he has his Cardinals solidly in the race in the National League East.

“We’re sitting around this table with the Mets back in ‘65,” Herzog says to Ashburn, painting a picture for the old batting champion of everybody who was there. The names, like Bing Devine and Joe McDonald, few fans would recognize; but every baseball insider would. Like Herzog, they’re part of that infrastructure of lifers who make the game’s gritty decisions about who gets signed, promoted, traded or cut. Since Herzog is the only man in history who’s held every job from player to scout to coach to farm director to GM, he may know more such people at more levels than anyone.

Herzog tells Ashburn about this sad rookie in the minors who’s been signed out of military ball at 22, is in way over his head facing teen-agers and is ready to go back to the Minnesota farm. “We decide to release him. And he’d have gone home, too. But Joe McDonald says, ‘Wait. I just loaned that guy $50. Let’s keep him ‘til payday.’ ”

As always in such yarns, the young pitcher saved his career with a couple of shutouts and has gone on to win 222 games in the major leagues. “So when Jerry Koosman goes against us this afternoon,” says Herzog, “I’m gonna remind him he’s just a $50 pitcher.”

From the bleachers, baseball seems geometrical, logical and at times even quantifiable. From the field, it reveals itself to be the same tangled maze of luck and coincidence, opportunity and circumstance, that tantilizes all human beings. Over a $50 whim, a life can change.

When fans talk trade, they discuss players, some outfielder who hit .289.

Whitey Herzog trades living men.

Building, tinkering, reworking and, especially, gambling are his passions. No central character in baseball is so at home in his world, so relaxed in the face of failure and so willing to take a chance just for the pure devilish hell of seeing what will happen.

Other baseball men, scalded by an awful trade such as Keith Hernandez for Neil Allen, might’ve lost their nerve.

Instead, Herzog keeps rolling the tumblers, waiting for the lock to fall open. This year, he’s broken the bank.

Twice.

In almost any other year, trading old grumpy George Hendrick to Pittsburgh for John Tudor, who’s 15-8 with a 2.12 ERA, would be the theft of the season. Herzog had spotted how wonderfully all of Tudor’s stats (except his 12-11 record) improved when he moved from Fenway Park to Pittsburgh in ’84. What, he wondered, would Tudor do in an even bigger park with a marvelous defense behind him. Answer: win 20, looks like.

This year, Herzog will have to compete with himself as foremost felon in the larceny sweepstakes. Jack Clark, who was having an MVP-type season before he was injured and had to go on the disabled list, was extracted from the Giants in February for four gentlemen of rapidly diminishing repute. Of the quartet, the only one who may leave a lasting dent in lore could be Jose Gonzalez, a journeyman who changed his name three times in a month, prompting coach Rocky Bridges to say, “He really is the player to be named later.”

Perhaps the Tudor and Clark magic shouldn’t have surprised us. Herzog, you recall, has done all this before.

Remember Hernandez, Hendrick and Lonnie Smith--the three top homer and RBI men on that ’82 gang (the later two grabbed in Herzog deals)? They’re all long gone now, just like third baseman Ken Oberkfell and the entire bench.

Of Herzog’s 10 ’82 Series pitchers, only two remain. And one of them (Bob Forsch) has gone from star to mop-up man.

“Dynasties” don’t last long these days, but Herzog’s house of cards couldn’t even stay upright until the next season’s All-Star game.

When the Cardinals, after being losers in ’83 (79-83) and mediocrities in ’84 (84-78), failed to resign reliever Bruce Sutter--The Franchise--last winter, folks thought Herzog was acting irrationally. Instead, the Cardinals are headed for 100 wins.

Even with hindsight, this seems almost impossible. Only four important characters from the ’82 champs retain vital roles: Joaquin Andujar (20-7), Willie McGee (.363), Tommy Herr (87 RBIs) and Ozzie Smith (of the Golden Glove.)

Part of the truth is that the ’82 Cardinals were a mite flukey. With only 67 team homers and no 16-game winner, they lived by speed, defense and Sutter. For Herzog, they were a case of Love the One You’re With. When you win a world title and only outscore the league by 76 runs, you’re using mirrors.

This ’85 club is beginning to look as though it might be the one he was trying to construct all along. Though their marquee value is still low, these Cardinals have already outscored the NL by over 100 runsin 124 games--almost twice the margin of any other NL team.

Though they are famous for their steals (205 so far, with 300 possible), what the Cardinals really do best is hit, pitch and field. The real stuff. St. Louis leads the league in hitting (.264) and scoring; only the spectacular Los Angeles pitching staff has a better ERA (2.87 to 3.09).

“With the Cardinals, the threat of the steal is worse than the steal itself,” says the Phillies’ Miki Schmidt. “The steal leads to one run, but the threat of the steal leads to big three and four run innings.

“With Vince Coleman (88 steals) and Willie McGee (42) at the top of the order, it seems like some of their innings take 10 or 15 minutes. The pitcher gets totally distracted. His concentration on the hitter is broken. He ends up falling behind the count and feeding a fastball to Tommy Herr or Jack Clark.”

While speed is only part of what makes the Cardinals excellent, it’s a big part of what makes them so much fun. From the day Herzog arrived, he’s built the first truly modern artifical surface team by emphasizing speed everywhere.

As soon as Herzog saw that the smart, dedicated Coleman was ready to play left field, he traded moody Lonnie Smith. “We had him (Coleman) ticketed for AAA for half a year, but talent can always surprise you,” says Herzog who lives by the credo that the gifted can be rushed while the plodders must be coddled.

“Vince and Willie are the two fastest men at the top of an order since Rock and Cool Breeze,” says Herzog using the nicknames for Tim Raines and Rodney Scott of the ’81 Expos.

“It’s been phenomenal for our fans to watch. But it’s exciting to watch for us, too,” says Ozzie Smith, who should be used to the shenanigans since the Cardinals are the first team since dead ball days to steal 200 bases in four straight seasons.

“Good pitching may stop good hitting, but does it stop good running? We always have ways to score. People talk down on it, like it’s a bad thing. What difference does it make how you do it? I think it’s an asset to do things this way. It makes us different. We might beat Dwight Gooden, 3-2, and never hit a ball hard off him.”

To purists, it’s appalling that 26% of Coleman’s hits and 23% of McGee’s never leave the infield. Maybe more are cheap turf grounders that would have been easy outs for 100 years on grass. Decades of pitching indoctrination--keep the ball down--merely feeds the flames of the Cardinals groundball and chop-hit offense.

Nonetheless, it’s a myth that these Cardinals can’t really hit properly. “What they can do is hit, especially those No. 2, 3, 4 guys,” says Cubs Manager Jim Frey. “Coleman may just slap it around, but McGee, Herr and Clark hurt you.”

McGee, in particular, has a special chemistry with Coleman, taking pitches so the rookie can steal. “Willie is the only hitter I ever saw who doesn’t give a damn whether it’s 2-0 or 0-2,” says Herzog. “I don’t think he knows what the count is or cares.”

The Cardinals still lack power (just 64 homers). And a third of their starting lineup could stump any “What’s My Line” panel: what positions do Andy Van Slyke (.254), Terry Pendleton (.228) Tom Nieto (.218) play? Let’s just say if you have a spare right fielder, third baseman or catcher, call the Rat. He’ll talk.

Among the pitchers, Andujar’s deliveries are as hard to figure out as the rest of him. Some managers would lose sleep if their ace was a man who once designed his own new home and forgot to include a roof. Herzog, however, knows Andujar just needs recognition and support.

When Andujar had a swollen ankle during the ’82 Series, Herzog was asked a thousand times what he would do if Andujar could not pitch. “Forfeit,” said Herzog, picking just the word to prime the ultra macho Andujar.

It’s not Andujar and Tudor who concern Herzog. Even sophomore Danny Cox (14-7, 2.83), one of those let’-’em-hit-it types that flourish in St. Louis, looks fairly sound for the stretch run.

The rest of the St. Louis staff can be summed up best in one Herzog gesture--a shrug. “Pitching is always the question,” he says. He, for one, has never milked a staff better.

Rookie Kurt Kepshire and Forsch, 35, have started 30 games, completed only one and have an ERA over 4.30 in a league where 3.00 doesn’t even get you noticed. But they’re 16-12.

The bullpen is the ticking bomb. Herzog won division flags in ‘76, ’77 and ’78 in K.C. with never-to-be-remembered firemen like Mark Littell, Doug Bird, Steve Mingori, Al Hrabosky and Larry Gura.

Now, he has five gents trying to keep the ghost of Sutter at bay. Forsch attempts long relief. The “stoppers” are lefty Ken Dayley who entered the year with a 10-19 record and 4.82 ERA and Jeff Lahti who had one career save. Together this year, they have a 5-3 record, 24 saves and a 2.47 ERA--about what you’d expect from Sutter.

Don’t ask. Nobody knows how.

Herzog just keeps doing it wherever he goes. If the Rat met a Bantu warrior in the offseason who threw his spear left-handed, he’d turn him into a decent relief picther in a month. One key is that Herzog seldom lets these fragile creatures work for long. “The key stat for a relief pitcher,” Herzog says, “is to find somebody with a history of getting the first batter out.”

Lahti has gotten 17 straight first men out. “I have no idea why,” he says.

Like Al Hrabosky in K.C., Lahti goes into an angry trance on the hill. “I talk to myself all the time and look right at the spot I want to throw.”

Does he glare at hitters, too?

“No. Seems like every time I make eye contact, I get punished,” he says.