RetroSimba

After he was fired from his job as Cardinals manager, Ken Boyer stayed with the organization and worked for his successor, Whitey Herzog.

Forty years ago, in February 1981, Boyer was at Cardinals spring training camp as an instructor, working with players who a year earlier he had managed.

It was one of multiple roles Boyer would fill for the Cardinals in 1981.

Helping hand

Cardinals general manager John Claiborne asked Boyer to stay with the franchise after Herzog replaced Boyer as manager in June 1980.

Boyer, an all-star and Gold Glove Award winner when he was Cardinals third baseman in the 1950s and 1960s, accepted the invitation and was assigned to visit the farm clubs, instructing and evaluating prospects.

In August 1980, Claiborne was fired and Herzog took on the additional role of general manager.

Boyer and Herzog became friends in 1966 when both were with the Mets. Boyer, the third baseman, and Herzog, a coach, shared an apartment in New York with Yankees players Roger Maris and Clete Boyer, Ken’s brother.

After he took over the baseball operations of the Cardinals in 1980, Herzog assigned Boyer to be an advance scout for the 1981 season.

“Whitey told me I’ve got the job that, in the back of his mind, he always thought he’d like to have,” Boyer told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Boyer’s job was to watch opposing National League teams and file reports on strengths and weaknesses before the Cardinals played them. He also was tasked with watching six American League clubs to rate players the Cardinals might want to acquire.

In addition to the scouting job, Boyer was asked by Herzog to come to training camp at St. Petersburg, Fla., in 1981 and help out in early drills.

Boyer agreed and was on the field daily with the Cardinals players in preparation for the Grapefruit League exhibition season.

Staying informed

When he was done helping on the field at training camp, Boyer took on the scouting assignment with gusto. He told the Post-Dispatch two other organizations had made offers to him to be a minor-league manager, but he rejected both in order to stay with the Cardinals.

“I’m really excited about it,” Boyer said of the scouting role. “It really keeps you in touch with all the right people … and it keeps you in touch with the players. You can ask a ballplayer two questions and he might tell you what’s going on with his club and around the whole league.”

In June 1981, while the major-league players were on strike and scouting was curtailed, Boyer stepped in when the Cardinals needed an interim manager at their farm team in Gastonia, N.C., after Joe Rigoli was suspended for bumping an umpire during an argument.

Boyer was back scouting when the players ended their strike in August.

Ol’ Kentucky home

After the 1981 season, the Cardinals’ top farm team relocated from Springfield, Ill., to Louisville. The owner of the Louisville Redbirds, A. Ray Smith, asked the Cardinals for Boyer to be the manager. They’d been together before. When the Cardinals’ Class AAA farm team was at Tulsa, Smith was the owner and Boyer was manager from 1974-76. 

Boyer never had been to Louisville and wasn’t keen on giving up a job scouting major-league teams to return to riding buses in the minors, but he agreed to visit before making up his mind.

Dan Ulmer, co-chairman of a committee to raise funds to refurbish a football stadium into a ballpark for the Redbirds, told the Louisville Courier-Journal, “Boyer didn’t think too much about the idea at first. Before he came here, he probably gave Louisville about a rating of 3 on a scale of 10. When he saw the stadium and the enthusiasm, we quickly moved up to about an 8 in his estimation.”

On Nov. 13, 1981, Boyer was introduced as Redbirds manager at a news conference in Louisville.

“This is a great opportunity for me,” Boyer told the Courier-Journal. “I welcome this challenge to get back into managing.”

Noting the widespread support for the return of a Class AAA ballclub to Louisville for the first time since 1972, Boyer said to the Associated Press, “It’s more like moving into a big-league market than a minor-league one.”

Attending the news conference as an observer was resident Pee Wee Reese, the former shortstop of the Dodgers. Reese had been team captain of the Dodgers, just like Boyer had been team captain of the Cardinals.

When Boyer spotted Reese, he said to him, “We’re going to make this Cardinals country, Captain. The Dodger Blue has gone as far as it can go. What do you think of that?”

“Reese shrugged,” Billy Reed of the Courier-Journal noted. “As a lifelong Louisvillan, he’s happy to see Class AAA baseball come back to town.”

Terrible time

Shortly after he was named Louisville manager, Boyer, 50, had a routine physical examination. The doctor ordered a biopsy, which revealed Boyer, a smoker, had inoperable cancer in both lungs and the esophagus, according to the book “Ken Boyer: All-Star, MVP, Captain.”

Boyer, divorced, initially told only his children about the diagnosis, according to the biography. He began receiving treatment in St. Louis after Thanksgiving Day. Boyer eventually informed Cardinals management, according to the book, but requested no announcement about his condition.

In January 1982, Boyer went to Mexico to receive treatments of the drug laetrile. Extracted from apricot pits, laetrile was not approved in the United States as an effective treatment for cancer.

After Boyer failed to show for a promotional event in Louisville on Jan. 21, 1982, the Courier-Journal reported he was “seriously ill.”

A. Ray Smith confirmed to the newspaper that Boyer had lung cancer, but said, “In my judgment, I think he’ll manage here.”

Joe McDonald, assistant to Whitey Herzog, said, “We expect Ken Boyer to be our manager in Louisville this season.”

A month later, on Feb. 22, 1982, with spring training approaching, Smith said Boyer wouldn’t be able to manage the Louisville club. Boyer’s health problems “are very serious,” Smith told the Associated Press.

Smith wanted former Angels manager Jim Fregosi to replace Boyer, but Fregosi declined, the Courier-Journal reported.

Cardinals scout Joe Frazier, former manager of the Mets, was chosen to manage Louisville in 1982. Frazier and Boyer were Cardinals teammates in 1955 and 1956.

Seven months later, on Sept. 7, 1982, a month before the Cardinals became World Series champions, Boyer, 51, died in St. Louis.