Unhappy with management’s indifference to re-signing any of the team’s core free agents and unwilling to ask those players to make the kinds of selfless sacrifices that were essential to the success of his Cardinals clubs, manager Whitey Herzog found himself trapped in the middle of an uncomfortable situation.
On July 6, 1990, Herzog, 58, resigned when he concluded he couldn’t be effective with a team uninterested in playing his style of baseball.
“I was totally embarrassed by the way our team played,” Herzog said to the Associated Press. “I just feel very badly for the ball club, the organization and the fans.”
Adios
Herzog said he decided to quit on July 3 while the 1990 Cardinals were in San Francisco. He discussed the decision with his wife on July 4, informed Cardinals management on July 5 and made the announcement on July 6 at a news conference at the team hotel in San Diego.
Three weeks earlier, Herzog had offered to resign, but club president Fred Kuhlmann and general manager Dal Maxvill talked him out of it. “He told us then it could get a lot uglier,” Maxvill said.
When Herzog stepped down, the Cardinals had a 33-47 record and were in last place in the National League East. In 11 years with the Cardinals, Herzog was 822-728, with three NL pennants and a World Series championship. He replaced Ken Boyer as manager in 1980 with the club in the cellar.
“I came here in last place and I leave here in last place,” Herzog told Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Red Schoendienst, the Cardinals coach and former manager, was named interim manager. “I had dinner with Whitey (July 5) and we stayed up late discussing the team,” Schoendienst told Hummel. “He never gave me a hint (about resigning).”
Herzog blamed himself rather than the players for the team’s performance. “I don’t think that I have done a good job as a manager this year,” Herzog said. “I just can’t get the guys to play and I think anybody could do a better job than me.”
Invested in self
Outfielders Willie McGee and Vince Coleman, third baseman Terry Pendleton and reliever Ken Dayley were among the ten 1990 Cardinals eligible for free agency after the season. By July, it became apparent management wasn’t interested in re-signing any of those core players.
“I watched Whitey suffer through this year and his hands are almost tied,” Cardinals broadcaster Mike Shannon said after Herzog resigned. “He can’t get things done right because we don’t really have a Cardinals baseball team here. What we have, in my estimation, is we’ve got so many people … just playing for themselves. They’re just playing for their free agency. Whitey Herzog is not going to be responsible for having a club that’s not a team.”
Herzog told Ross Newhan of the Los Angeles Times, “I felt I couldn’t look them in the eye and ask them to do the little things we always had to do because it might cost them 10 points off their batting averages and that might cost them $3 million as free agents. We had a half season to go and I felt powerless.”
Before the season ended, the Cardinals traded McGee to the Athletics. Coleman, Pendleton and Dayley became free agents after the season and signed with other teams.
In his book “You’re Missin’ a Great Game,” Herzog said, “Fred Kuhlmann decided not even to negotiate with our free-agent players. He wouldn’t even talk to their agents. I said, ‘Man, at least talk to them; let ’em think they might be coming back. That way they have something to play for.’ But they wouldn’t do it.
“Why is that important? For our type of ball club, it was death … If we were going to win, we had to hit to the right side, play team ball and sacrifice personal stats … But if you were up for free agency, and if you knew the club didn’t want you, would you shoot the ball to right?”
Brain drain
The impending free agents weren’t the only players falling short of executing to Herzog’s standards. “I feel kind of responsible,” said first baseman Pedro Guerrero. “I know that I haven’t done the job that I did last year at this point.”
Said Herzog of his players: “The effort is there, but sometimes I don’t know if the minds are there.”
After his news conference, Herzog departed for St. Louis on an Anheuser-Busch corporate jet without saying goodbye to his team.
“We didn’t deserve for him to talk to us,” catcher Tom Pagnozzi told Bernie Miklasz of the Post-Dispatch. “We embarrassed him. We all but spit on him with the way we played. He didn’t have to say anything to us. We know why he’s leaving. We drove him out of here.”
Said Pendleton: “It wasn’t his fault that we stunk.”
Faces of hate
Miklasz, a sharp-eyed, pull-no-punches observer, had this chilling opening to his column from the Cardinals clubhouse in San Diego after Herzog departed:
“This was a clubhouse divided, with all the ugly cliques finally exposed,” Miklasz wrote. “Cardinals were squared away in opposite corners, eyeballing each other with looks that could kill. White players, mostly pitchers, on one side. Black players, most notably Ozzie Smith, on the other. Bad vibrations everywhere.
“It’s no wonder Whitey Herzog wanted out of here and escaped on the first corporate jet he could find. Whitey didn’t resign; he evacuated, leaving behind a team so ripped apart and split open that the players didn’t try to conceal the wounds. No one bothered to put on a mask. Nothing could hide these faces of hate.”
Previously: Ted Simmons helped put pal Joe Torre on path to Hall
You could feel it early in that season when they traded Brunansky. Granted they got Lee Smith in the deal but it’s the way they went about it with not offering Bruno a better contract and no trade.
The 1990 team had so much promise.
Whitey did the best he could with what he had. After Gussie died the Busch family could care less…and they would do it again with Torre.
Good insights, Tim. Thanks for reading and for commenting.
Great post. It’s interesting how time fades memories. I’ve read Whitey’s book, but reading this I was surprised again at how that season unfolded. We were all unhappy with the team, but his resignation stunned us. Thanks for writing.
Thank you for the feedback! I agree that time makes us forget just how troubled the Cardinals organization was at that time.
Ozzie and Willie were my favorite players from that team as a kid. Yet as I grew older I started to see that Ozzie imbued many of his actions and comments with a racial agenda. I lost a lot of respect for him. I never was a big LaRussa fan, but he was right to ask Ozzie to move to second when they got Clayton in 1996. But Ozzie’s ego was too big to do what was best for the team when his arm and skills had clearly eroded with age and injury.
I’m sure people know this, but it is worth repeating that McGee won his 2nd NL batting title in 1990 despite being traded to Oakland.The 1989 Cardinals, true to their good odd number year pattern from 1985 and ’87, battled for the division title until Worrell got hurt late in the season. They never recovered and the bad finish seemed to carry over to 1990. Pendleton played much better in 1991 when he left for Atlanta and won a batting title while leading the Braves to their first World Series since 1958.
Excellent insights. Thank you for commenting.
The 90’s were not a very happy decade for the Cardinals. After Whitey resigned in 1990, I just threw in the towel on that season and went fishing.
Good move. Makes me appreciate the recent successes even more.
I think if Lankford had been healthy for the playoffs, St. Louis may well have won the 1996 title – they only needed 1 more win to reach the World Series without their best player. But other than a solid season in 1993, as you say the ’90s were not too good for the Cards. Fortunately, the 21st century has been.
We are in a Golden Age. Enjoy.
Very true. The Cardinals have been the most consistently good team in baseball this century, and the future continues to look bright. And even better – unlike the Yankees, Red Sox and Dodgers – they do it through the draft and player development, not with big money free agents.
Some of this is great to see….being from that era, just remembered how Whitey walked off from the team, without saying bye, and they not knowing they were without management…but reading up on some things, I didn’t know about, how the organization, wouldn’t offer a deal with players, that he needed, etc etc… I see why he felt why he felt… The organization, actually still do that same crap this date…but it was good to understand more about those tough times, that drive him away..team divided, players unhappy, etc, is a disaster in the making….thanks for the insight….
Thank you for reading and for commenting.
Whitey never hesitated to say that Mr. Busch was the best owner he ever worked for. When Mr. Busch passed away in September of ’89, an era came to an end. The surviving family members had no intention of dedicating themselves to the team. They proved it the following year. It’s a shame things ended the way they did. At 58 years of age, Whitey still had a lot to offer. Yes, he would have had to change strategy a bit because the game itself was starting to change. But had we had ownership and management that really cared to keep the Cardinals a playoff conntender Whitey would have still worked his magic. One of the commenters here mentioned Joe Torre. We really made fools of ourselves with him. We hire a baseball genius, give him nothing to work with and then fire him.
Well said. A corporate ownership which sees its baseball team as largely a marketing tool for other products and other investments does a disservice to the team and those who support it.