REDBIRDS ARE . . .Whitey’s Boys : Cardinal Manager Keeps Things Homey: Duck Dances and Titles

This goes back a ways--a lot of Whitey Herzog stories do--but this one probably best characterizes the original player’s manager.

The story has Herzog, 22-year-old corporal in a day when flat-tops were in, but long before he had acquired his, all the same, managing the Army team at Ft. Leonard Wood in sun-scorched Missouri.

The Leonard Wood Hilltoppers, the story goes, had a doubleheader scheduled the next day, and dang if Warren Spahn wasn’t pitching in St. Louis and wouldn’t the boys love to go watch a real big leaguer twirl. They sure would.

So what does a player’s manager do, a real player’s manager? Well, this one stands out on the diamond at midnight, applying a hose to it until the turf acquires the consistency of the La Brea tar pits. It became, baseline to baseline, a muddy mess, a quagmire, more a rice paddy than a playing field.

Now, wouldn’t you love to have been there when Herzog, as apologetic as all get out, explained to the brass that, well, there just couldn’t be a doubleheader, no way, on account of the field couldn’t be negotiated with anything that didn’t have treads and a turret. Mighty peculiar, Whitey, the brass must have said, in that there hasn’t been what we like to call rain in these parts. And Whitey probably said it was most peculiar indeed and if you need me today, me and the boys will be in St. Louis, watching ol’ Spahnie. And we sure hope that field dries someday.

Now you see why, don’t you, the boys love to play for him, whether at Ft. Leonard Wood, at Kansas City or, most particularly, now at St. Louis. The kind of guy who will wet down a field for you, well, wouldn’t you go through a wall for him? Players have and will, which is one reason why Herzog always seems to win.

As Ozzie Smith said earlier in the week: “Playing for Whitey is the easiest thing in the world. He just has two rules. Be on time and give 100%”

If you’re one of Whitey’s boys, which is anybody who goes through a wall for him, he’ll take you from dynasty to dynasty. Like Darrell Porter, a catcher with a wing you wouldn’t want in a bucket of the Colonel’s chicken. Porter went through walls for Whitey in Kansas City, so he was brought to St. Louis, torn rotator cuff and all.

It’s a nice thing to be one of Whitey’s boys because of getting all that postseason money. Nobody gets more of it than Whitey’s boys. In the eight full seasons he has managed, his teams have won five division titles. So where is that wall?

This particular dynasty, which was entirely unexpected, developed out of the ashes of a previous one, also unexpected, and carries the Herzog stamps of speed, luck and a kind of family loyalty.

Who expected rookie Vince Coleman to steal 110 bases? He was ticketed for Louisville.

Who expected Jack Clark, cranky all those years with the San Francisco Giants, to come to the Cardinals and begin gushing. “When I first came here I knew right away the atmosphere was perfect for winning,” Clark told USA Today.

That’s one thing Herzog is good at--creating a nice, homey atmosphere. They say you have to go back to his home in New Athens, Mo. (pronounced Ay-thens), to really get a handle on Whitey and how he prizes family ties, in the family or on the team. As it happens, a lot of people have been there and their report, more or less, follows:

The occasion is most often brother Butzy’s Labor Day barbecue, an event that somewhat enlivens a town that only two years ago got automatic pin setters.

Butzy, something of a character himself--his real name is Codel, so there you are--likes to serve a nice stew of squirrel brains and chukar, and keep the wine flowing and that German music up loud so all you can think is where can you march.

Those who have been there and didn’t succumb to the squirrel brains, the wine or the German music recall that as the blood-alcohol count veers toward whole numbers, something called the duck dance happens. It might take some time to actually find the duck dance record, but find it Butzy will, and soon everybody is hopping about the room, flapping his arms.

Even Whitey?

Everybody, witnesses report, and most especially Whitey. Only person, in fact, not doing the duck dance that particular year was Whitey’s wife, Mary Lou, but she was in a cast and most remorseful about it. She kept saying, it is reported: “I wished I could do that.”

There may be no point to this story, besides a laugh, except to say that Herzog has not strayed too far from those small-town, tight-knit family values. Except for his life in baseball, Herzog is every bit the country bumpkin his brother is, as down to earth as a good plate of squirrel brains, which is so darned hard to find these days.

He is a man, for example, who fishes every morning, game or not. The other day, before the playoffs opened at Dodger Stadium, this piece of intelligence so took the assembled baseball writers off guard that you had to wonder whether you weren’t eavesdropping on an interview for Field and Stream.

“What’d you do yesterday morning, Whitey?”

“Went fishing up at some strip mine pits,” he said, making a ball of tobacco that he subsequently put in his cheek.

The sporting press, which he courts extravagantly, marveled for a while, perhaps trying to picture Tom Lasorda wetting a line. “You catch anything?”

“Did good. Cleaned them, got home at 11 and got on the plane to Los Angeles.”

Herzog, who doesn’t mind cultivating the country image, then looked into the stands and said, chewing and expectorating away: “Sure are a lot of Dodger jackets here.” Then it seemed to flash on him that, of course, he was at Dodger Stadium. “Also,” he said laughing, “I seen a lot of California license plates.”

This is the man you’d vote most likely to buy a Rolex in Times Square. In fact, his ability to judge value has often been held up to review. In rebuilding these Cardinals, for example, he let Keith Hernandez go to the Mets for Neil Allen, which was not considered shrewd in baseball circles.

But Hernandez was not one of Whitey’s boys. Never was and never would be. It was thought at the time to be his worst maneuver since he acquired thepearl-white 1958 Edsel that he had been so proud of.

On the other hand, he can at times be a marvelous judge of talent. An Army buddy remembers coming down to visit when Herzog was playing with the Kansas City A’s--this was when he was tooling around in his ’58 Edsel--and hearing about one of Kansas City’s latest finds. “The boy can pound the ball,” Herzog said. “Could break Babe Ruth’s records.”

That boy, as it turned out, was not Henry Aaron. It was, however, Roger Maris.

And so has Herzog been shrewd again this year, getting 110 steals out of Coleman, getting 21 victories out of .500 pitcher John Tudor, who had been obtained for George Hendrick, and getting a bullpen that had registered one save the season before to make St. Louis forget Bruce Sutter. Clark, their lone slugger, came mighty cheap as far as that goes.

Herzog has been busy, all right. From that 1982 World Series winner, only seven players remain. But they’re all Whitey’s boys.

Which is good for them, since it is once again playoff time and since the Cardinals are once again in those playoffs. These are boys he’d wet down a field for, no question.