Before guiding the St. Louis Cardinals to three National League pennants and one World Series championship in the 1980s, Whitey Herzog helped launch the Kansas City Royals to their first ever playoff appearances in the late 1970s. The Hall of Fame manager died Monday at the age of 92.
Nearly two years after Herzog was fired from his first job as a major league manager with the Texas Rangers, Royals’ general manager Joe Burke hired him in July 1975. Burke had worked in the Rangers’ front office in 1973, when Herzog didn’t even get through his first season as a manager.
Herzog said the second chance that Burke gave him was his lucky break.
“I don’t think I would have gotten another opportunity to manage in the big leagues if it hadn’t been for Joe Burke,” said Herzog in Cooperstown, New York, before his 2010 National Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
Herzog knew the first year he was manager that he was on the hot seat when Rangers owner Bob Short told him the high regard he had for another manager, the well-traveled Billy Martin.
“He (Short) said, ‘I would fire my grandmother and hire Billy Martin,’” Herzog recalled. “Two days later, I’m fired. I’m the grandmother and Billy’s managing Texas.”
After Burke’s move to fire then-Royals manager Jack McKeon and replace him, Herzog inherited a young team that was just beginning to tap its potential.
The infield was anchored by third baseman and future Hall of Famer, George Brett, who was just 22 at the time. It didn’t take Herzog long to realize that Brett was his best hitter, and he wanted him batting third in the lineup.
Brett later said it was the boost his young career needed.
“When you have the confidence of the manager, and he’s going to put you in the same position, you don’t start pressing,” Brett said. “It was the best thing that happened to me at that time in my career.”
Under Herzog, that young Royals squad would go on to win the American League West three consecutive years, starting in 1976. But in each of those seasons, they couldn’t get past the New York Yankees in the playoffs to reach the World Series.
Nevertheless, on the artificial turf at what was then known as Royals Stadium, Herzog laid the foundation for what was later referred to as “Whitey Ball.”
Herzog himself would define it later in life.
“Whitey’s ball is nothing more than using speed and playing good sound, fundamental baseball,” said Herzog. “Your players have got to buy into it. We can turn a walk into a triple.”
Before becoming a dugout leader, Herzog had an eight-year major league career as a journeyman outfielder, including three seasons with the Kansas City Athletics before that franchise moved to Oakland.
As a player, Herzog said he tried to maximize his abilities and outsmart others. It dated back to his days growing up in New Athens, Illinois, across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, when he knew he had his school principal in his corner.
“I’d tell him I’m going to hitchhike over to the ballpark tomorrow,” Herzog recalled.“He said OK, he’d protect me (and) wouldn’t even tell my mother. I’d get home and she thought I was in school. I was over there seeing the (St. Louis) Browns and Cardinals play.”
Herzog first signed with the Yankees organization in 1949 and watched how legendary manager Casey Stengel ran the team. The Yankees traded Herzog to the Washington Senators in 1956 before they moved to Minnesota and became the Twins.
One of his teammates in Washington was Hall of Fame slugger Harmon Killebrew. Killebrew, who died less than a year after attending Herzog’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony, said Herzog had a high baseball IQ.
“He (Herzog) knew how to play the game and learned well through the Yankee organization,” said Killebrew who finished his 22-year playing career under Herzog with the Royals in 1975.
“When he came to Washington, he knew the game of baseball.”
Herzog was fired by the Royals in 1979 and took over the Cardinals in the middle of the 1980 season. He overhauled that team, too, and the Cardinals won the 1982 World Series.
Brett believes it was no coincidence that the Cardinals are one of today’s top-drawing teams at the box office after the success of the Herzog era helped reinvigorate that historic franchise.
“Without Whitey, I don’t think that happens,” Brett said. “Tremendous baseball mind, tremendous friend and a tremendous strategist.”
Herzog’s second World Series appearance was in 1985, against the Royals. The team Herzog groomed in Kansas City became World Series champions after beating the Cardinals in seven games.
During his Hall of Fame speech in 2010, Herzog recognized that he had reached baseball immortality.
“Being elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, is like going to heaven before you die,” he said.
