Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} You're Missin' a Great Game by Whitey Herzog RetroSimba. Why Cardinals wanted Whitey Herzog in, Ken Boyer out. When Whitey Herzog became Cardinals manager, he replaced a friend who had been his roommate and teammate with the Mets. On June 8, 1980, the Cardinals fired manager Ken Boyer and hired Herzog to succeed him. Boyer, an all-star and Gold Glove Award winner as Cardinals third baseman in the 1950s and 1960s, was their manager since April 1978. Herzog managed the Royals to three consecutive division titles before being fired after the 1979 season. In 1966, the Mets had Boyer as their third baseman and Herzog as a coach. In his book, “White Rat: A Life in Baseball,” Herzog said he and Ken Boyer shared a New York apartment with Yankees players Roger Maris and Clete Boyer, Ken’s brother. “When the Mets were on the road, Clete and Roger had the place, and when the Yankees were on the road, Kenny and I took it over,” Herzog said. After Boyer was fired by the Cardinals, he told a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter, “Wish Whitey Herzog good luck. I hope they can turn it around.” The comment was relayed to Herzog, who said, “I appreciate that. We are very good friends.” Time for a change. After Herzog left the Royals, Cardinals general manager John Claiborne called him occasionally to seek his opinions on players. Claiborne and Herzog had worked together for Bing Devine with the Mets. At one point in their conversations, Herzog said, Claiborne asked whether he’d want to become a paid consultant to the Cardinals. “I told him I didn’t want to get tied up with something like that, but I’d be happy to give him my opinions when he asked for them,” Herzog said. The 1980 Cardinals hit the skids early and Claiborne and club owner Gussie Busch determined Boyer needed to go. On Saturday, June 7, 1980, Herzog said he got a call from Busch’s attorney, Lou Susman, who asked him to meet Busch in St. Louis the next morning. Meanwhile, Claiborne headed to Montreal, where the Cardinals were playing, to inform Boyer he was fired. Claiborne intended to get to Montreal on Saturday night and meet with Boyer the next morning, but a rainstorm canceled the connecting flight and Claiborne had to spend the night in Chicago. On the morning of June 8, 1980, Herzog went to Busch’s estate at Grant’s Farm and Claiborne took a flight from Chicago to Montreal, where the Cardinals and Expos were to play a Sunday afternoon doubleheader. Herzog met with Busch and Susman, and was offered a one-year, $100,000 contract to manage the Cardinals. When Herzog objected to the length of the contract, Busch countered with a three-year deal through the 1982 season. Herzog accepted and Busch made plans to announce the hiring in a news conference late in the afternoon. At Montreal, the Cardinals lost Game 1 of the doubleheader, dropping their record to 18-33 and giving them 21 losses in their last 26 games. Boyer was in the clubhouse, making out the lineup card for Game 2, when he looked up and was surprised to see Claiborne enter. “I thought for certain he had come here to discuss possible trades,” Boyer told the Montreal Gazette. Instead, Claiborne told Boyer he was fired. “This is something you want to talk about to a man face to face, not over the telephone,” Claiborne said. Claiborne offered Boyer another job within the organization, but Boyer said he wanted time to think it over. “Boyer was on his way to St. Louis by the second inning of the second game,” the Gazette reported. Coach Jack Krol filled in as manager for Game 2, and the Cardinals lost again. Mourning in Montreal. In the locker room, after getting swept in the doubleheader, most Cardinals said they were sorry Boyer was gone and exonerated him of blame for the team’s record. Boyer was 166-191 as Cardinals manager. In comments to the Post-Dispatch, first baseman Keith Hernandez said the 1980 Cardinals were “the worst team I’ve been on since I’ve been in the major leagues. The worst. We are bad. The manager is only as good as his horses and we don’t have the horses. I’m going to miss Ken Boyer.” Second baseman Tommy Herr said, “There’s a lack of professionalism among certain players as far as guys running groundballs out, 100 percent all-out effort.” Cardinals catcher Ted Simmons and pitcher Bob Forsch were two of the players most upset by Boyer’s firing, according to the Post-Dispatch. “Old Cardinals die hard,” Simmons said. Pitcher John Fugham told The Sporting News, “Unfortunately, there were not 25 people on this team that were as intense as Kenny Boyer was. Therein lies the problem.” Vern Rapp, who two years earlier was fired while the Cardinals were in Montreal and replaced as manager by Boyer, was a coach with the 1980 Expos. Asked his reaction to Boyer’s firing, Rapp told the Post-Dispatch, “I feel sorry for anybody it happened to. I know how it feels. It’s not a good feeling.” Oh, brother. At the news conference at Grant’s Farm introducing him as Cardinals manager, Herzog said, “I’m going to take this dang team and run it like I think it should be run. I don’t think I’ve ever had trouble with players hustling. I understand that’s been a problem here. I think you’ll see the Cardinals running out groundballs.” Asked whether the Cardinals needed a leader to emerge from within the team, Herzog said, “I don’t need a team leader. I’m the leader.” Said Busch: “My type of manager, without any argument.” Born and raised in New Athens, Ill., Herzog described himself as a “very opinionated, hardheaded Dutchman.” At birth, he was named Dorrell Norman Elvert Herzog. His mother said she intended to name him Darrell, but the name got misspelled. In New Athens, where he excelled at basketball as well as baseball, everyone called him Relly. In the New Athens High School yearbook, it was noted, “He likes girls even more than basketball.” As a professional ballplayer, he got nicknamed Whitey because of his light blonde hair. Herzog had two brothers _ Therron, who everyone called Herman, and Codell, who everyone called Butzy. When Herzog was named Cardinals manager, Butzy, who “never played baseball in his life,” told Whitey what lineup he should use to help the Cardinals improve. “I may play his lineup,” Whitey said. “He better,” Butzy told the Post-Dispatch, “or we’ll have a fight.” Whether or not it was with Butzy’s help, the Cardinals went on to win three National League pennants and a World Series championship during Whitey’s 11 years as their manager. RetroSimba. After managing the Cardinals, Whitey Herzog and Tony La Russa both decided to extend their baseball careers as executives with other teams. On Nov. 12, 2019, La Russa was named senior advisor of baseball operations for the Angels. It followed stints as chief baseball officer of the Diamondbacks and special advisor to Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski. As manager, La Russa led the Cardinals to three National League pennants and two World Series titles, leaving after winning the second crown in 2011. Herzog joined the Angels one year after his last season as Cardinals manager. He led the Cardinals to three National League pennants and one World Series title, quitting in midseason with the team mired in last place in July 1990. Job confusion. In September 1991, Herzog was named senior vice president and director of player personnel of the Angels. Herzog said he believed he was overseeing the entire Angels baseball operation. Instead, he found himself in a power struggle. Dan O’Brien was the Angels’ senior vice president for baseball operations when Herzog was hired. Herzog thought O’Brien primarily would be his assistant, handling paperwork. In his book “You’re Missin’ a Great Game,” Herzog said, “I made sure I worked out every detail in advance … I’d be in complete charge of baseball operations: the minor-league system, the hiring and firing of coaches and scouts, the ballclub’s trades and drafts.” O’Brien thought Herzog primarily would be evaluating players, leaving O’Brien to direct most of the baseball operations, including approval of trades and free-agent signings. Herzog won the battle _ O’Brien eventually was fired _ but lost the war, resigning before the Angels could become contenders. Work from home. His friends, Angels owners Gene and Jackie Autry, hired Herzog with the goal of bringing the franchise its first American League pennant and World Series title. Herzog was given an apartment in Anaheim, but kept his residence in the St. Louis area and did most of his work from that home. He didn’t have an office at the Angels ballpark. “Whitey doesn’t want to be an office person and he doesn’t have to be,” Angels president Richard Brown told the Los Angeles Times. “My exact words to him were, ‘If I see you in Anaheim in the office, you’re not doing your job.’ He has to be on the road a lot. I’m going to be relying on him constantly to evaluate our young players, and I don’t want him reading scouting reports. I want him evaluating what he saw.” O’Brien did have an office at the Angels ballpark. In a March 1992 interview, six months after Herzog was hired, O’Brien told the Los Angeles Times, “You can’t do things in this business in 1992 as you did in 1990 because it’s in a constant state of change. Contracts, more than anything else, keep getting in the way. The talent is probably now one of the easier things to analyze.” In 1992, Herzog’s first full season with the team, the Angels finished 72-90 and ranked last in the American League in hitting and runs scored. The next year wasn’t much better. The 1993 Angels finished 71-91. Herzog and O’Brien remained at odds. Bob Nightengale of the Los Angeles Times described the working relationship of the two senior vice presidents as “deteriorated beyond repair.” O’Brien ouster. In mid-September 1993, Brown convinced the Autrys to fire O’Brien. Bill Bavasi, the Angels’ farm director, was promoted to general manager, reporting to Herzog. Bavasi was to handle administrative duties. Herzog was given the title of vice president in charge of baseball operations and was allowed to continue to work primarily from his suburban St. Louis home. Wrote Nightengale, “The Herzog-O’Brien conflict was set in motion by the Angels two years ago when they appointed Herzog as vice president in charge of player personnel. Herzog was told that he would be in charge of all baseball operations, but O’Brien carried the title of vice president in charge of baseball operations and never relented in his duties, creating the impression within baseball that no one was in charge.” Said Angels manager Buck Rodgers: “It was doomed from Day 1 … They are two good baseball men, but it’s hard to succeed when you don’t have one guy in control. You have to have a No. 1 guy.” (A year later, in a November 1994 interview with Nightengale, O’Brien said he was surprised by his firing. “The thing that I find funny is that people kept saying that Whitey and I never got along,” O’Brien said. “That wasn’t true. I mean, Whitey was never around. He did things his way and I did things my way. All I know is that I was there every day in the office.”) In his book, Herzog said, “They never told (O’Brien) what my duties were until I’d arrived. He got protective of his job, cut me out of meetings and fought my authority for two years.” Old-school dropout. With O’Brien gone, Herzog gave an ill-advised multi-year contract to pitcher Joe Magrane, the former Cardinal. (Magrane would have elbow surgery 12 days before spring training began.) Herzog also created a stir by exploring the possibility of acquiring another former Cardinal, outfielder Vince Coleman, who had flopped with the Mets. (It didn’t happen.) Herzog’s old-school tactics backfired with some players or their agents. He also may have felt restricted by a reduced player payroll. In January 1994, four months after O’Brien was fired, Herzog resigned, stunning the Angels. Bavasi replaced him. In a blistering column, Mike Penner of the Los Angeles Times opined, “Herzog was baseball’s first absentee general manager _ he ran a ballclub based in Anaheim from his den in St. Louis _ and the best thing he generally managed from there was his leisure time.” Said Herzog: “I don’t really want to be traveling all over and going back and forth to California or anywhere else.” Wrote Nightengale, “Herzog was told that the Angels’ budget would have to be slashed to about $19 million, and instead of acquiring players in the free-agent market, he couldn’t even secure his own. He alienated several of his players in negotiations with his brash, sometimes abusive, style. He screamed at starter Mark Langston in a closed-door session. He slammed the phone in reliever Steve Frey’s ear. He bullied agents.” “He had a great deal of respect and recognition among his peers, but the reality now is that this is a different era, and he hasn’t crossed that bridge,” said Steve Comte, Frey’s agent. Said Arn Tellem, Langston’s agent: “Whitey’s strengths were finding and evaluating players, but not in the art of diplomacy dealing with lawyers and agents.” In his book, Herzog took credit for identifying Angels minor leaguers Garret Anderson, Tim Salmon, Jim Edmonds and Gary DiSarcina as prospects and for preparing them to advance to the majors. Said Herzog, “When I finally handed the reins over to Billy Bavasi in ’94 _ I’d been grooming him to replace me _ he said, ‘Man, you’re leaving at the wrong time. You’re the guy who put this together and it’s ready to blossom.’ I knew it was, but I didn’t need any credit.” Whitey Herzog Jonathan Pitts. You're Missin' a Great Game : From Casey to Ozzie, the Magic of Baseball and How to Get It Back. Jonathan Pitts; Whitey Herzog. Published by Simon & Schuster (1999) About this Item: Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0684853140I4N00. You're Missin' a Great Game : From Casey to Ozzie, the Magic of Baseball and How to Get It Back. Jonathan Pitts; Whitey Herzog. Published by Simon & Schuster (1999) About this Item: Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0684853140I4N00. You're Missin' a Great Game : From Casey to Ozzie, the Magic of Baseball and How to Get It Back. Jonathan Pitts; Whitey Herzog. Published by Simon & Schuster (1999) About this Item: Hardcover. Condition: As New. No Jacket. Pages are clean and are not marred by notes or folds of any kind. ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0684853140I2N00. You're Missin' a Great Game : From Casey to Ozzie, the Magic of Baseball and How to Get It Back. Jonathan Pitts; Whitey Herzog. Published by Penguin Publishing Group (2000) About this Item: Mass Market Paperback. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0425174751I4N00. You're Missin' a Great Game : From Casey to Ozzie, the Magic of Baseball and How to Get It Back. Herzog, Whitey; Pitts, Jonathan. Published by Simon & Schuster (2007) From: GreatBookPricesUK (Castle Donington, DERBY, United Kingdom) About this Item: Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 5092663-n. You're Missin' a Great Game : From Casey to Ozzie, the Magic of Baseball and How to Get It Back. Herzog, Whitey; Pitts, Jonathan. Published by Simon & Schuster (2007) From: GreatBookPricesUK (Castle Donington, DERBY, United Kingdom) About this Item: Condition: As New. Unread book in perfect condition. Seller Inventory # 5092663. You're Missin' a Great Game: From Casey to Ozzie, the Magic of Baseball and How to Get It Back (Paperback) Whitey Herzog, Jonathan Pitts. Published by SIMON & SCHUSTER, United States (2007) From: The Book Depository (London, United Kingdom) About this Item: Paperback. Condition: New. Language: English. Brand new Book. At its best, baseball calls on a wide array of subtle skills, rewarding the teams that know how to play the game better than their opponents over the long 162-game season. Whitey Herzog learned those skills under the tutelage of Cesey Stengel in the Yankees' training camps of the 1950s: how to take a lead; which side of the cutoff man to aim for; when to take an extra base depending on whether the outfielder throws left-handed or right-handed; the best ways to turn or prevent a double play. These little things might make a difference in two or three games over the course of a season, but two or three wins are often what separates a pennant winner from the pack. As Whitey would personally learn playing alongside greats like Roger Maris and Yogi Berra -- and managing players like George Brett, Darrell Porter, and Ozzie Smith -- baseball should reward such attention to detail. That inside knowledge can create the chance for a less physically awesome team to beat its imposing adversaries -- and what is more satisfying in sports than David toppling Goliath through skill and guile?But in the modern game, Herzog argues, players don't learn these skills, and the game no longer rewards them if they do. Expanded playoffs mean that more teams reach the postseason, so excellence over 162 games is less important than ever before. Players know that their agents will negotiate salaries based on their home runs, batting averages, and RBI counts; why learn the parts of the game that don't show up in the box scores? The richest teams can bash their way into the playoffs by signing the players they need to play a power game at bat and on the mound. The free-agent draft deemphasizes good scouting, and the bonuses being paid to untested rookies further widen the gap between rich and poor. For the majority of teams, the season is over before it's begun; their economic circumstances won't let them play the only style you can win with today.But it would be wrong to lump Herzog in with the crowd that says things can never be as good as they used to be. Outrageous, thought-provoking, candid, and laugh-out-loud funny, You're Missin' a Great Game celebrates the game of baseball as it was, and as it can be again. For all the fans revitalized by the excitement and glamour of the home-run chase and the barrier-breaking '98 season, Whitey Herzog shows how -- with some intelligent planning and attention to the virtues of the game -- baseball's best days can and should be still ahead of us. Seller Inventory # AAV9781416552055. You're Missin' a Great Game: From Casey To Ozzie, The Magic Of Baseball And How To Get It Back. Whitey Herzog, Jonathan Pitts. Published by Simon & Schuster 2007-02-01 (2007) From: Chiron Media (Wallingford, United Kingdom) About this Item: Paperback. Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 6666-LSI-9781416552055. You're Missin' a Great Game by Whitey Herzog. Etsy uses cookies and similar technologies to give you a better experience, enabling things like: basic site functions ensuring secure, safe transactions secure account login remembering account, browser, and regional preferences remembering privacy and security settings analysing site traffic and usage personalized search, content, and recommendations helping sellers understand their audience showing relevant, targeted ads on and off Etsy. Detailed information can be found in Etsy’s Cookies & Similar Technologies Policy and our Privacy Policy. Required Cookies & Technologies. 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Some black-and-white photographs. 314 pages, tall 8vo, gilt-stamped red leather, a.e.g. Connecticut: Easton Press, 1999. Fine. First edition. Signed by the author. Binding: Hardcover Condition: Fine Edition: First Language: English. Price: $125.00. Feedback. The book arrived yesterday, was beautifully packaged for careful shipping and is exactly as described. I am thrilled to have this book to add to my library. Looking forward to additional purchases. Many thanks. A.T. Hello. I think that you will like to know that the Robert Frank's book came today in perfect conditions. You get my congratulations for so fast shipping. Best regards. Pablo Ram.