“I remember when I was in Texas [in 1973 as the Texas Rangers’ manager], and I’m sitting in the dugout with the owner, who was then Bob Short. Someone says that Billy Martin had been fired in Detroit. So Short says, ‘How could they fire the best manager in baseball?’ My club was about 40 and 90 at that point [actually 47-88], and when I heard that, I said to myself, ‘Oh boy, that don’t sound too good. So you can never have any timetable other than winning now.” That was St. Louis Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog speaking to Peter Pascarelli of Knight-Ridder News Service in 1982.
Indeed, Herzog was fired five days after the Detroit Tigers fired Martin so that Short could hire Martin. At the press conference to announce the firing, Herzog said, “I thought the emphasis here was supposed to be more on development than winning right away. I guess I was wrong about that, and when you’re wrong with a 47-91 record, you’re not going to get very far.” The Texas experience seemingly cured him of the desire to take any rebuilding jobs again.
“I’m Not That Smart”
Herzog had a four-game stint as the California Angels’ interim manager in 1974, then got his big break when the Kansas City Royals hired him to replace Jack McKeon midseason in 1975. With Kansas City, Herzog enjoyed a run of success that included three consecutive American League West Division titles from 1976-78. Unfortunately, that coincided with the advent of free agency and New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner’s spending spree, and in the AL Championship Series, the Royals couldn’t get past New York. In 1979, the Royals finished second. After the season, Herzog met with general manager Joe Burke and left without an offer to continue as manager for 1980. In his last two seasons at KC, Herzog had publicly criticized the owners for not spending money on free agents and Burke for not making trades, and his bluntness was beginning to rub players the wrong way.
However, the Cardinals were willing to give Herzog another shot at piloting a major league club when they fired manager Ken Boyer on June 8, 1980. At the press conference to announce his hiring, Herzog said, “I’m going to tell [the players] that it all boils down to the fact that I’m easy to get along with if they work hard. If you’re good enough, you’ll win. Ballplayers make the manager. I’m not that smart.” After 73 games, he was kicked upstairs to take the GM job on August 26, with Cardinals legend Red Schoendienst replacing him in the dugout. The 1980 Cards were 38-35 with Herzog at the helm and 74-88 overall, finishing fourth in the National League East Division. Meanwhile, Herzog didn’t like what he saw of some players’ attitudes while he was managing. He knew that some guys had to go if the Cardinals were ever going to be winners. “There were some bad characters on that team,” rookie Tom Herr told Rick Hummel of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
On October 24, 1980, it was announced that Herzog would assume the dual role of manager and GM for the 1981 season. Thus began the housecleaning.
Let’s Make a Deal
During the 1980 winter meetings, Herzog pulled off an astonishing run of transactions designed to rid the Cardinals of bad apples and build a team tailor-made for the expansive artificial surface of Busch Stadium, one that would emphasize speed, defense, and a deep bullpen:
December 7, 1980: The Cardinals signed free agent Darrell Porter.
December 8, 1980: The Cardinals traded Terry Kennedy, John Littlefield, Al Olmsted, Mike Phillips, Kim Seaman, Steve Swisher, and John Urrea to the San Diego Padres for Rollie Fingers, Bob Geren, Bob Shirley, and Gene Tenace.
December 9, 1980: The Cardinals traded Leon Durham, Ken Reitz, and Ty Waller to the Chicago Cubs for Bruce Sutter.
December 12, 1980: The Cardinals traded Fingers, Ted Simmons, and Pete Vuckovich to the Milwaukee Brewers for David Green, Dave LaPoint, Sixto Lezcano, and Lary Sorensen.
Best in the Division, but. . .
The Cardinals had the best record in the NL East in 1981 but didn’t play in the postseason. The 1981 season was interrupted by a players’ strike on June 12. The sides came to an agreement in time for the season to resume with the All-Star Game on August 9. Meanwhile, fans were bitter over the stoppage. To maintain interest in what remained of the season, Major League Baseball came up with a hokey plan to divide the season in half. The teams with the best records in their respective divisions as of June 12 would play in a Division Series against the teams that won their divisions in the second half to determine who would play in the Championship Series. The idea had disaster written all over it. The Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds had the best records in their divisions but won neither half of the split season and didn’t participate in the playoffs. The Yankees, with the fourth-best record in the AL East, were an odd participant in the World Series, which the Los Angeles Dodgers won. Surprisingly, the postseason was exciting, but of course that was little consolation to Herzog and the Cardinals.
Meanwhile, Herzog kept dealing during the season and afterwards, determined to build a champion. The key moves:
March 3, 1981: The Cardinals signed free agent Steve Braun, who played for Herzog at KC.
June 7, 1981: The Cardinals traded Tony Scott to the Houston Astros for Joaquin Andujar.
October 21, 1981: The Cardinals traded Bob Sykes to the Yankees for Willie McGee.
November 20, 1981: As part of a three-team trade, the Cardinals traded Silvio Martinez and Sorensen to Cleveland and received Lonnie Smith from the Philadelphia Phillies.
December 10, 1981: The Cardinals traded Luis DeLeon, Lezcano, and Garry Templeton to the Padres for Steve Mura, Olmsted, and Ozzie Smith.
There were a few minor deals as well, but for those keeping score, the 1980 and 1981 transactions listed here resulted in Herzog trading 20 players and getting 17 in return, with four on the list being on both the “traded” and “received” sides of the ledger.
The Catcher
Herzog had to have the left-handed-hitting Porter, his catcher with Kansas City from 1977-79. There, Porter hit .271/.375/.435, 61 HR, and 301 RBI while playing solid defense and earning a reputation for handling pitchers. At KC, he was worth 10 Fielding Runs Above Average (FRAA) and caught 42.5 percent of would-be base stealers. The Cardinals already had an All-Star catcher in Simmons, a future Hall-of-Famer, although a questionable one in this writer’s opinion. Simmons, a sleepy-eyed switch-hitter, had been a Cardinal since 1968, and hit .298/.366/.459, 172 HR, and 929 RBI there. However, his defense left much to be desired. With St. Louis, he posted an above-average 37.1 percent caught-stealing rate, but also led the NL in stolen bases allowed four times and passed balls three times.
Herzog revealed to the press that he originally planned to move Simmons to first base and first baseman Keith Hernandez to left field. However, Herzog said, “Simmons told me he didn’t want to play first base. . . I wouldn’t have considered trading Simmons if he had agreed to play first base.”
Porter’s game-calling skills and handling of pitchers were a good fit with Herzog’s defensive philosophy. Arnold Irish of The Post-Dispatch surveyed the Cardinals’ pitching staff and found nothing but high praise for Porter. “Darrell knows what a pitcher’s best pitch is, and he knows what he wants the hitter to get,” said Bob Forsch. “So he calls the game in such a way that the hitter is unprepared for the pitcher’s best pitch.” Said John Stuper, a rookie in 1982, “I don’t like a catcher out there [on the mound] all the time. . . If I’m dropping my shoulder, he doesn’t trot out there to tell me about it. Just makes a motion with his shoulder.”
The Relief Ace
Why trade Fingers? Herzog said it was because he was in the last year of his contract and couldn’t have been signed. It could also be because St. Louis wasn’t big enough for two ace relievers. In five seasons with the Cubs, Sutter, a right-handed split-fingered fastball specialist, had a 2.39 ERA, 133 saves, and a 1.055 WHIP. The Cubs traded him principally because of his salary demands. He previously won an $800,000 award in arbitration and was prepared to go there again. The Cardinals resolved that issue by signing him to a four-year contract on January 9, 1981. “Bruce Sutter is the best relief pitcher in the history of baseball, according to Whitey Herzog,” Cardinals president August A. Busch Jr. told the press, explaining the rationale for the contract.
The best in the history of baseball? That’s a dubious claim, but in any event, opposing hitters found him difficult to hit. First baseman Bill Buckner told Robert Markus of The Chicago Tribune, “Playing behind him in my first two years with the Cubs, he was the biggest mismatch against hitters I have ever seen. He made good hitters miss by two feet.” Said Phillies shortstop Larry Bowa, “When he gets [the split-fingered pitch] going, it’s almost impossible to hit. He keeps it down and it looks like a strike – and then the bottom drops out.” Added Buckner, “Even though you know it’s coming, your mind and body can’t adjust, because the pitch is so different from anything else you see.”
Sutter tried to explain the pitch to Tim Kurkjian of The Dallas Morning News. “Guys throw variations of it,” he said. “Mine goes straight down, others make their ball go down to the side with a variation of their changeup or with a screwball. I can do that if I want to. But their ball spins sideways, mine spins downward.” Asked whether there was an aerodynamic reason behind it, Sutter replied, “I don’t know. I’m a baseball player.”
In 70 games with the 1982 Cards, Sutter went 9-8 with a 2.90 ERA and a major league-leading 36 saves, garnering votes for the NL Cy Young and Most Valuable Player Awards.
The Rookie
The speedy 23-year-old switch-hitter McGee began the 1982 season at Triple-A Louisville. When Green, who was the key to the trade with Milwaukee, was injured, McGee was recalled on May 10 and made his major league debut as a late-inning replacement. “To be honest about it,” Herzog told Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Bruce Keidan during the World Series, “I brought Willie up figuring we’d send him back to Louisville as soon as David could play again. But he played so well, you couldn’t take him out of there. Finally, we wound up sending Green down to Louisville. But he was hitting .341 [actually .345] down there in August, so I had to bring him back, too.”
What an embarrassment of riches Herzog had. The free-swinging McGee seized the center field job, pushing Lonnie Smith to left field, hit .296/.318/.391, and stole 24 bases in 123 games, receiving votes for Rookie of the Year. Playing all three outfield positions, Green hit .283/.315/.373 in 76 games.
Up to that point, McGee had been underestimated, beginning with his time in the Yankees’ system. The Yankees never even dressed him for a spring training game unless he was on the B squad. Then in 1981, they cut him from their 40-man roster when they signed Dave Winfield. Herzog wanted McGee and thought it too risky to wait for the Rule 5 draft. He offered Sykes for McGee. The Yankees accepted. Sykes never pitched in the major leagues again after Herzog traded him. Despite being on Herzog’s wish list, even he underestimated McGee. He confessed to George Vass of Baseball Digest, “I certainly didn’t think he’d be able to come up here and handle the pitching like he has.”
Reflecting on being sent down by St. Louis in spring training, 1982, for Mark Whicker of The Philadelphia Daily News, McGee acknowledged that he had a poor spring, and added, “But I didn’t think I’d make the big club anyway. They thought so highly of David Green. They called me up and I thought, well, this is my chance.” McGee would no longer be underestimated. To paraphrase an utterance by Michael Scott of The Office, from then on, the Cardinals would estimate McGee.
The Wizard
The Cardinals’ regular shortstop in 1981, Templeton, a talented switch-hitter, became an enigma. Things came to a head on August 26 at Busch Stadium, when St. Louis hosted the San Francisco Giants. In the first inning, Templeton was booed for jogging to first base after Giants catcher Milt May dropped the third strike. He was booed again when he took the field before the start of the fourth inning and responded with two obscene gestures. Umpire Bruce Froemming immediately ejected him from the game. Templeton wanted to go into the stands. The United Press International photo of Herzog pulling Templeton into the dugout ran in newspapers across the country.
Herzog angrily told the UPI afterward, “When Garry grows up to be a man and apologizes to the fans and his teammates, he can play. . . I don’t understand the boy. I don’t know why he has been playing like he has. He really hasn’t been giving good effort. . . He’s kind of just going through the motions.” Templeton eventually apologized, was reinstated on September 15, and played well. But it seemed that the relationship was irreparably damaged.
Herzog wanted to trade Templeton for Ozzie Smith. Ozzie had a no-trade clause in his contract with San Diego. He grew up and went to college in Southern California and didn’t want to leave the area. Herzog flew to San Diego to persuade him to waive the no-trade clause, telling him the Cardinals could win a pennant with him.
Busch Stadium and the Cardinals were made for Ozzie. In 1982, he hit just .248/.339/.314, but he stole 25 bases, won a Gold Glove Award, was an All-Star, and received some MVP votes. He led major league shortstops with 535 assists, 21 FRAA, and 3.5 dWAR. It seemed he was in the highlight reels almost on a nightly basis, turning in one acrobatic play after another. The guy was made for Sports Center.
The World Series
During the 1982 season, Herzog surrendered the GM job to Joe McDonald. The Cardinals won the East Division with a 92-70 record and swept the Atlanta Braves in the NLCS. In a twist of fate, their opponent in the World Series would be the Brewers, where players traded there by Herzog were thriving. Vuckovich was 18-6 with a 3.34 ERA despite a 1.502 WHIP, and would go on to win the AL Cy Young Award. Fingers had a 2.60 ERA, 29 saves, and a 1.042 WHIP. Simmons hit .269/.309/.451, 23 HR, and 97 RBI as Milwaukee’s full-time catcher. He also played four games at first base for the 1981 Brewers. Even so, Simmons did Herzog a favor by refusing to play first base, where Hernandez won a fifth consecutive Gold Glove and led all NL first basemen with 13 FRAA. Herzog’s Plan B in left field, speedy, hard-nosed Lonnie Smith, hit .307/.381/.434 while stealing 68 bases and creating havoc at the top of the order. Smith led the NL with 120 runs scored and the Cardinals with 6.2 WAR.
The Brewers, led by manager Harvey Kuenn, had an impressive offensive attack. “Harvey’s Wall Bangers” hit .279/.335/.455 with 216 home runs. The Cardinals hit only 67 home runs. They stole 200 bases to the Brewers’ 84, but the pundits generally predicted Milwaukee to take the Series in six games, citing their significant edge in power. The Brewers seemed to justify the prognosticators’ faith when they took Game 1 in St. Louis, 10-0. When the Brewers took a 4-2 lead in Game 2, it looked as though the handicappers may have overestimated St. Louis. But the Cardinals stormed back to tie it in the sixth inning on Porter’s two-out, two-run double. They won the game, 5-4, after Brewers pitcher Pete Ladd walked Braun with the bases loaded in the eighth inning.
The Series shifted to Milwaukee’s County Stadium. Game 3 was the Willie McGee Show. McGee hit two homers off Vuckovich, and then in the bottom of the ninth inning, he robbed Gorman Thomas of a home run with a well-timed leap at the center field wall. The Cards took Game 3, 6-2. “I don’t know anybody who ever played a better World Series game than he did tonight,” Herzog told Keidan. “No, I never hit two home runs in a game before,” McGee told the assembled press. “Maybe in Little League.”
But the Brewers bounced back to take the next two games, 7-5 and 6-4, and the press was touting Milwaukee shortstop Robin Yount as the Series MVP. At that point, he was 11-for-21 and was leading the Series in total hits, RBI, total bases, and slugging percentage. Speaking to the press after Game 5, Herzog couldn’t figure out how to pitch to him. “We keep trying to get the ball in a certain spot, and every time we get it in the spot, he hits it. He has to rank up there in the top three in baseball.” But Herzog didn’t think the boisterous Milwaukee fans, anxious for their first World Series championship since the Braves brought home the trophy in 1957, affected the outcome. “They didn’t get any hits,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ozzie Smith gained a fan in Yount. “I haven’t seen enough of Smith, but he’s been doing things I’ve never seen anyone do. I don’t know how he gets off the ground and makes throws like he does.”
The Cardinals won the final two games in St. Louis. Game 6 was a 13-1 laugher. The volatile Andujar was pitching a gem in Game 7, ahead 4-3 after a seventh inning that ended with the Brewers’ Jim Gantner trying to get into his head. After Gantner grounded out to Andujar, the two exchanged words and umpire Lee Weyer had to separate them. Gantner said he called Andujar a hot dog. Andujar said Gantner called him a hot dog (insert 12-letter obscenity here). Gantner did the Brewers no favors. Herzog didn’t want an upset Andujar going back out to pitch the eighth, so he turned to Sutter to finish the game. Sutter retired all six Brewers he faced. The Cardinals won the game, 6-3. Porter, who hit just .231 in the regular season and was frequently booed at Busch, was named the Series MVP. He was also the NLCS MVP. Porter was 8-for-28 in the Series with two doubles, a home run, and five RBI.
Caution! “Old Man” Rant Ahead!
This was an interesting time in baseball, one that would soon vanish as quickly as the eight-track tape. It was a time when we saw trades that truly met the definition of “blockbuster,” major leaguers traded for major leaguers, both teams helped immediately. The right trades could turn a bad team into an instant contender, unlike today’s trades, which mostly serve to dump salaries onto teams that can better afford them in exchange for prospects, who may or may not become impactful players. For the weaker teams, they’re the starting points for endless five-year plans; when one doesn’t work, the cycle starts all over again. With these types of trades, baseball’s winter meetings are mostly a ho-hum affair. Hopefully, the new Collective Bargaining Agreement changes all that. Hopefully it changes a lot of things about baseball.
