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How Alvin Dark saw the light with Ozzie Smith

December 22, 2025 by retrosimba

In baseball, being right can get you fired. It happened to Alvin Dark.

When the Padres opened spring training camp in 1978, Dark made a daring decision. The manager named Ozzie Smith the starting shortstop.

Smith, 23, had no big-league experience. He didn’t have much minor-league experience either. He’d spent part of a season at Walla Walla, and a couple of months in the Arizona Instructional League. Dark saw him there.

A shortstop himself (with the Cardinals and others) before becoming a manager, Dark determined Smith was ready to make the leap from Class A to the majors.

“Alvin Dark took a chance on a skinny kid from south-central Los Angeles, and he believed that I could one day be one of the best shortstops that ever played the game,” Smith recalled to Cardinals Yearbook in 2002.

Dark’s bold move turned out to be a smart one. Smith did the job, taking the first impressive steps toward a Hall of Fame career, but Dark wasn’t there to witness the rookie’s rise. In shaking up the infield, Dark shook up Padres management and players. He was fired before spring training ended.

Under development

When Ozzie was 6, his father, Clovis, a truck driver, and mother, Marvella, moved the family from Mobile, Ala., to the Watts section of Los Angeles. In August 1965, “we had to sleep on the floor because of the looting, rioting and sniping,” Smith recalled to Vahe Gregorian of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Clovis left the family and Marvella worked seven days a week in a nursing home.

At Locke High School, Smith was a teammate of another future Baseball Hall of Famer, Eddie Murray. The Orioles took Murray in the 1973 amateur draft. No clubs sought Smith. He enrolled at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo and made the baseball squad as a walk-on.

“I never taught Ozzie anything about playing defense,” Cal Poly coach Berdy Harr told the Chula Vista Star-News. “He already knew what that was all about when he came to us. He had a sense of timing, rhythm, I had never seen.”

As Smith later recalled to the Philadelphia Daily News, “I never had trouble catching the ball, even in Little League. I’ve always been able to throw it and I’ve always had a knack for making the right play.”

What Smith needed help with was controlling his temper. “I had a short fuse in high school,” he told the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

He also had to become a better hitter. Smith batted .158 as a college freshman; .230 his sophomore season. Harr suggested he try switch-hitting.

In the summer of 1975, Smith played semipro baseball in Clarinda, Iowa. “Most people would have no idea of how intimidating and stressful it could be for a young black player to move into an all-white rural community in the Midwest,” Smith said in his Hall of Fame induction speech.

The townsfolk embraced him, however, and Smith thrived, improving his hitting. He was a complete player when he returned to Cal Poly for his junior year, batting .308. Detroit took Smith in the seventh round of the 1976 amateur draft, but he didn’t like the Tigers’ offer and opted to stay in school.

As a senior, Smith hit .307, stole 44 bases for the second season in a row and dazzled on defense. “In all my years of coaching, he is the one player I would most rather depend upon in a clutch situation whether it was fielding, making a throw or executing offensively,” Harr told the San Luis Obispo Tribune. “It has been a pleasure watching him mature as a person and as a player.”

Shortstop sensation

The Padres signed Smith after taking him in the fourth round of the 1977 draft. Sent to Walla Walla, he produced a .391 on-base percentage in 68 games and swiped 30 bases.

In the fall, the Padres put Smith on their Arizona Instructional League team. Hall of Fame second baseman Billy Herman, a Padres minor-league hitting instructor, saw him and was impressed. Then Alvin Dark arrived.

Dark knew what it took to play shortstop. He’d been a good one, a three-time all-star and recipient of the 1948 Rookie of the Year Award. Dark played in World Series for the Braves (1948) and Giants (1951, 1954). The Cardinals traded Red Schoendienst for him in 1956.

As a manager, Dark won a National League pennant (1962 Giants) and a World Series title (1974 Athletics). The Padres hired him in May 1977, replacing John McNamara.

It didn’t take long for Dark to determine the Padres needed an infield upgrade. Their second baseman, Mike Champion, batted .229, third baseman Tucker Ashford had no power (three home runs) and shortstop Bill Almon made 41 errors, hit two homers and struck out 114 times. Overall, the 1977 Padres made a league-leading 189 errors, including 46 at shortstop.

Dark came to the 1977 Arizona Instructional League to see another player, but the one who got his attention was Ozzie Smith. The shortstop made two jaw-dropping fielding plays in one game. “They were the kind of plays you said, ‘I don’t believe this,’ ” Dark recalled to the Post-Dispatch. “To have the coordination and the rhythm and the timing all in one body like Ozzie had, that was very unusual.”

Ready or not

At spring training in February 1978, Dark declared Smith the shortstop and shifted Bill Almon to second base. Derrel Thomas, acquired from the Giants, took over at third and Gene Richards went from left field to first. The reconstructed infield was “a gamble that alarmed the front office,” The Sporting News reported.

Almon, Richards and Thomas were playing out of position. When the four starting infielders didn’t mesh in early spring training games, the Padres reacted with panic rather than patience. “We were getting a lot of feedback from players,” Padres owner Ray Kroc told The Sporting News.

On March 21, 1978, Dark was fired. The infield experiment “contributed to his banishment,” The Sporting News reported.

Additionally, “Alvin wasn’t communicating with the players, the front office or the media,” Kroc said to The Sporting News. “He wasn’t willing to delegate authority to his coaches … Alvin had a tendency to overmanage. He wanted to be the pitching coach, the batting coach, the infield coach.”

Padres player Gene Tenace told the magazine Dark “put in so many trick plays and had so many signs that everyone was uptight. There were too many things to worry about. I like Alvin … but the team is more relaxed now that he’s gone.”

In his book “When In Doubt, Fire The Manager,” Dark said, “I felt it was disgraceful that I didn’t even get the chance to start a season with the Padres.”

According to The Sporting News, Kroc briefly considered replacing Dark with the man he’d been traded for 22 years earlier, former Cardinals manager Red Schoendienst, who was a coach with Oakland. Instead, Kroc went with another ex-Cardinal, Roger Craig, promoting him from pitching coach to manager.

Roller-coaster ride

Craig took over with 17 spring training games remaining. After eight days on the job, he shifted Bill Almon to third base and put Derrel Thomas at second, but he stuck with Ozzie Smith at shortstop. “I’ve never seen anyone with better hands, or quicker hands and feet,” Craig told The Sporting News.

On Opening Day against the Giants, Smith started and batted eighth. By the end of April, Craig moved him to the No. 2 spot in the batting order. Smith thrived; the Padres didn’t. After their record sunk to 24-32, Kroc expressed his disgust with the team. “I can’t understand it,” Kroc told The Sporting News. “These dumb (expletives) didn’t want to play for Alvin Dark. Now do they want to play for Roger Craig? Not a damn bit … I don’t think they’ve got any guts or pride … I want ballplayers. I’m not going to subsidize idiots … Only four players on this team are responding: Ozzie Smith, Derrel Thomas, Randy Jones and Gaylord Perry. The rest (which included the likes of future Hall of Famers Rollie Fingers and Dave Winfield) are demanding major-league salaries and playing like high school kids.”

The Padres won three of their next four. A week later, they won six in a row. They didn’t have a losing month the rest of the year, finishing at 84-78, their first winning season since entering the National League in 1969.

Smith was a major factor in the success. He produced 152 hits, swiped 40 bases and fielded superbly. Recalling his years with the World Series champion Athletics when Bert Campaneris was their shortstop, Rollie Fingers told The Sporting News, “Ozzie has made plays that Campy never could have made.”

When word about Smith’s wizardry spread through the league early in the 1978 season, Phillies manager Danny Ozark told the Philadelphia Daily News, “Nobody with just one year in Walla Walla can be that good.” After seeing Smith for the first time, Ozark said to columnist Bill Conlin, “He made a believer out of me. I’ve never seen a rookie shortstop make the plays he made against us. I haven’t seen any shortstop play better than he did … and I’ve got one of the best (Larry Bowa) in baseball history … Once every decade or so a player comes along you know is something special _ a (Willie) Mays, a (Hank) Aaron, a (Rod) Carew. I think Smith is going to fit into that special category with his defense.”

Padres broadcaster Jerry Coleman, who was a Yankees teammate of Hall of Fame shortstop Phil Rizzuto, said to the Chula Vista Star-News, “Ozzie has made plays this season that I have never seen other shortstops make.”

Reflecting on the Padres’ topsy-turvy season, Roger Craig told The Sporting News, “Alvin (Dark) made some mistakes, but Ozzie wasn’t one of them.”

Traded to the Cardinals before the 1982 season, Smith came to symbolize the Whiteyball style of play manager Whitey Herzog implemented in St. Louis. Smith helped the Cardinals win three National League pennants and a World Series title. He earned 13 consecutive Gold Glove awards from 1980 to 1992.

In his induction speech at the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2002, Smith gave Alvin Dark his due: “It was Alvin who saw the dream in me … He brought me into the major leagues.”

Posted in Games, Hitters, Managers, Prospects | 12 Comments »

Outcasts: Why Hawks shunned Paul Seymour, Cleo Hill

December 15, 2025 by retrosimba

Wintertime and the living was easy for the frontcourt trio of Bob Pettit, Cliff Hagan and Clyde Lovellette. The high-scoring glamour boys of the NBA St. Louis Hawks were living on Easy Street. Their coach, Ed Macauley, was known as “Easy Ed.” His coaching style matched his nickname. He liked a set offense, with Pettit, Hagan and Lovellette taking most of the shots.

Easy as one, two, three.

Then came a change. Paul Seymour replaced Macauley. As a playmaking guard, Seymour sparked the Syracuse Nationals to a NBA title in 1955, then became their coach. He coached like he played _ fiery, tough, wily.

When Seymour came to St. Louis, he envisioned a wide-open style of play. He wanted a fast pace and scoring from the guards.

Cleo Hill was the kind of player Seymour had in mind. Hill was exceptionally quick, an acrobat who could score from anywhere on the court. After the Hawks drafted Hill, Seymour turned the rookie loose to run the floor and put up shots.

The Big Three, Pettit, Hagan and Lovellette, did not like this. Ease off, they told their coach. Buzz off, Seymour replied.

Then all hell broke loose.

Pioneer pro

As a youth, Paul Seymour played alley basketball in his hometown of Toledo, Ohio. The matchups were two against two. He and a friend, Bob Harrison, “challenged any other pair in the city,” Seymour recalled to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “In winter, we’d shovel the snow off the alley and play on.”

(Harrison later played nine seasons in the NBA, including two with St. Louis.)

After his freshman year at the University of Toledo, Seymour, 18, quit to join the Toledo Jeeps of the National Basketball League (NBL) in 1946. “That was a great club,” he told Lowell Reidenbaugh of The Sporting News. “I was the kid, getting $87.50 a week, and we traveled in a station wagon, often covering 500 miles a night to keep our schedule. We took turns at the wheel and you know what trick I got _ the last one, from 4 a.m. to daybreak.”

Seymour picked up the lifelong habit of smoking cigars then “because, with everyone else in the car smoking, a guy needed a smokescreen in self defense,” he told Bob Broeg of the Post-Dispatch.

The St. Louis Browns had seen Seymour play baseball and in 1947, when he was 19, he signed with them, then changed his mind rather than go to minor-league Pine Bluff, Ark., as an outfielder, the Post-Dispatch reported. Instead, he went to Baltimore of the Basketball Association of America (BAA).

After the 1948-49 season, the NBL and the BAA merged to become the National Basketball Association (NBA). Baltimore sold Seymour’s contract to Syracuse for $1, according to the Toledo Blade.

Seymour played 11 seasons for Syracuse, including the last four as player-coach. He was talented and successful in both roles.

A three-time all-star, Seymour was team captain of the 1955 NBA champions, averaging 14.6 points and 6.7 assists per game. “He played a brand of defense that bordered on stalking, refusing to let his opponent out of sight,” wrote Syracuse Post-Standard columnist David Ramsey. “He dropped 25-foot set shots and sank layups with either hand. He ran the team’s offense with wisdom and imagination. In short, he could play.”

As Syracuse forward Dolph Schayes noted to the newspaper, “He was the heart and soul of the Syracuse Nats … We were scrappy and never gave up. That was Paul … He was indestructible.”

Syracuse was 155-124 in Seymour’s four seasons as coach and twice reached the NBA Eastern Division Finals. The job paid just $13,000 a year, though, and Seymour wanted better.

After the 1959-60 season, Hawks owner Ben Kerner eased Easy Ed Macauley out of the coaching job, named him general manager and wooed Seymour with a three-year contract that included a pay raise, plus incentive clauses.

“He’s a complete coach,” Kerner told The Sporting News. “He knows the game, knows the talent and has that tremendous desire which is so necessary for all champions … He’s a rough, tough competitor … He reflects confidence in his every move and that assurance rubs off on his players.”

Changing times

Ben Kerner was to Hawks basketball coaches what George Steinbrenner later became to Yankees baseball managers: a carnivore who ate them for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

In the five seasons since moving the Hawks from Milwaukee to St. Louis in 1955, Kerner went through five head coaches: Red Holzman, Slater Martin, Alex Hannum, Andy Phillip and Ed Macauley. After Hannum led the Hawks to the 1958 NBA championship, he quit. “I never liked Hannum,” Kerner told Sports Illustrated. “He was a real tough hombre … He did a hell of a job, but he never was my type of guy … I didn’t feel safe with him. He wasn’t loyal.”

(Hannum won another NBA title with the 1966-67 Philadelphia 76ers.)

As for Macauley, Kerner told Sports Illustrated’s Gilbert Rogin, “I like Macauley … but he didn’t have the guts … I do feel Paul is a better coach than Macauley.”

The team Seymour inherited was a good one. The Hawks finished in first place in the Western Division in each of Macauley’s two seasons as coach and reached the NBA Finals in 1960. Seymour was hired to win a NBA title.

In addition to the Big Three of Pettit, Hagan and Lovellette, Seymour’s 1960-61 Hawks had a self-assured rookie guard, Lenny Wilkens. (Wilkens, elected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame for his success as a player and a coach, was accepted by the Big Three because he passed the ball to them often. The rookie averaged 11.7 points per game.) “Our front line has the power,” Seymour told the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, “but we can increase that power through a more effective backcourt, especially in scoring.”

Seymour sent a message to the Big Three early in the 1960-61 season that the easy living days of Easy Ed were gone. (Macauley quit as general manager in September 1960.) Seymour fined Lovellette for lagging on defense during a game. As Bob Broeg noted, “When he put the bit on (Lovellette), he served notice to the rest of the team. Paul has been around long enough to know that hustle is part condition, part ability, but mostly desire.”

Described by Hawks radio broadcaster Buddy Blattner as “a backroom brawler with polish,” Seymour energized the Hawks, who hustled their way to the 1961 NBA Finals but then lost in five games to the Boston Celtics.

Boston was the better balanced team. It had plenty of muscle up front with center Bill Russell and power forward Tommy Heinsohn, and an array of guards (Bob Cousy, K.C. Jones, Sam Jones, Frank Ramsey, Bill Sharman) who poured in points. While Hagan and Pettit scored big, the Hawks’ backcourt didn’t match Boston’s. Wilkens was the only threat.

Meanwhile, two of the Hawks’ Western Division rivals had introduced big-scoring rookie guards _ Oscar Robertson with the Cincinnati Royals and Jerry West with the Los Angeles Lakers. If the Hawks were to stay atop the division and have a chance to dethrone Boston for the NBA title, Seymour determined, they’d need more firepower in the backcourt.

Urban legend

The Hawks’ first-round choice in the 1961 draft was Cleo Hill, a 6-foot-1 guard from Winston-Salem Teachers College.

Hill’s path to the NBA had been filled with roadblocks. Growing up on Belmont Avenue in Newark, N.J., “I got in with a tough bunch of guys and wasted a lot of time,” Hill said to Dave Klein of the Newark Star-Ledger. “I didn’t study, I didn’t have respect for my elders, and I thought I knew everything there was to know.”

The first mentor who helped Hill get on track was Frank Ceres, a coach and playground instructor at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in Newark. Ceres told Hill he could become a good basketball player. He taught Hill to shoot a jump shot and how to produce backspin.

At Newark’s South Side High School (now Malcolm X Shabazz High School), Hill came under the guidance of Frank Delany, who taught U.S. history and coached the basketball team. “The best part of the (basketball) practice was his talk period,” Hill said to the Newark Star-Ledger. “He’d talk about the educational, athletic and social aspects of his players’ lives.”

Hill became a prolific prep scorer. His homecourt gym was small, with a low ceiling that intimidated visiting players. Hill tailored his shot-making to fit the territory. His arsenal included a line-drive hook shot he could make with either hand.

Al Attles, whose success in the NBA as a player, coach and executive earned him election to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, played for Weequahic High School in Newark and was matched against Hill. “Cleo was the greatest high school player I’ve ever seen,” Attles said to the Star-Ledger. “In terms of overall basketball talent, he’s as good as there ever was.”

Weequahic coach Les Fein told the newspaper that Hill “could shoot from anywhere … He was incredibly quick and flexible and he had the ability to get free for any shot he wanted, any time he wanted.”

Despite Hill’s basketball talent, going to college was not a slam dunk. His academic grades “were barely passing,” the Star-Ledger noted. Frank Ceres, the elementary school mentor, made some calls to friends at Winston-Salem Teachers College. The school offered a basketball scholarship on one condition: Hill would need to get good grades in college to stay eligible.

Big man on campus

Winston-Salem Teachers College (now Winston-Salem State University) was the first historically black institution in the nation to grant degrees for teaching the elementary grades.

The school’s basketball coach, Clarence “Big House” Gaines, was dedicated to education as well as to athletics, and he helped Hill focus on studies. “He took a guy from the streets and put him into the programs _ English, mathematics and reading, remedials,” Hill recalled to the Star-Ledger. “He made me work hard and stressed getting a degree over and against making pro.”

To help Hill expand his vocabulary, Gaines encouraged a game: When Hill learned a new word, he’d test Gaines on whether the coach knew the meaning. Hill kept coming back with new words, hoping to trip up Gaines.

Hill also met a student, Eliza Ann, who emphasized to him the importance of an education. She became his wife.

(In spring 1962, after his season with the Hawks, Hill returned to Winston-Salem and completed the work to earn his degree.)

Meanwhile, Hill’s basketball skills blossomed. “He was the most scientific player I ever coached,” Gaines told the Star-Ledger. “He had the greatest assortment of shots of any player I ever coached.”

Basketball broadcaster Billy Packer was a player at a bigger Winston-Salem school, Wake Forest of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), at the time Hill was in college. ACC basketball teams hadn’t integrated _ (the first black basketball player in the ACC wouldn’t arrive until December 1965) _ but Packer and his teammates would play pickup games against Hill and his teammates. “Cleo was better than anybody in the ACC at that time,” Packer told the Winston-Salem Journal.

Hill scored 2,488 career points in college. That was the school record until Earl “The Pearl” Monroe totaled 2,935. (Both achieved those figures before there was a three-point line.) Though Gaines coached both players, he told Mary Garber of the Winston-Salem Journal in 1973 that Hill was “the most complete player I’ve ever had … He could do the job both offensively and defensively.”

Special talent

The Hawks took Hill with the eighth pick in the first round of the March 1961 NBA draft. Paul Seymour, chief scout Emil Barboni and scouting adviser Ed Vogel saw Hill play and put him at the top of their list. “He would have been our first draft choice even if we would have had the first pick,” Seymour told the Post-Dispatch.

The Celtics, selecting after St. Louis, would have taken Hill if the Hawks hadn’t, the Post-Dispatch reported.

Marty Blake, then the Hawks’ business manager, later told reporter Vahe Gregorian that Hill “came into the league with abilities that were 40 years ahead of his time.”

“Great first step, unlimited range … and he was quick,” Blake said to the Asbury Park (N.J.) Press. “I mean, he was a speed demon.”

In a 1993 interview with reporter Bill Handleman about Hill, Billy Packer said, “There was no question he was destined for superstardom in the NBA. We’re not talking about some nice rookie here. We’re talking about Michael (Jordan). Cleo was Michael 33 years ago. At 6-foot-1, he did the things Michael Jordan does … We’re talking about a guy who should be in the (Naismith) Hall of Fame.”

Packer’s broadcast colleague Bill Raftery concurred, telling the Asbury Park Press in 1993 that Hill “did a lot of Jordanesque type of things we see today.”

With Lenny Wilkens unavailable for the first three months of the 1961-62 NBA season because of a military service commitment, Hill became the Hawks’ top guard. Seymour worked with the rookie to get him ready.

Power plays

In the regular-season opener, at home against Cincinnati, Hill scored 26, “drawing roars from the large crowd with his spectacular leaps while driving for shots or snaring rebounds,” the Post-Dispatch reported.

The black-owned weekly, St. Louis Argus, noted, “This young man captures the imagination of the crowd with his grasshopper leaps under the basket (and) his showboating gallops down (the) court.” Game stats

Hill scored 16 in his second game, but went cold soon after. The rookie missed 13 of 16 against Syracuse, misfired on 10 of 12 versus Chicago and clanked another 13 of 16 against Syracuse again.

Critics said he looked nervous, insecure, and there were grumbles about his unorthodox ways and playground style.

Seymour asked his players for patience and unity. He was confident Hill would figure it out, make the necessary adjustments.

The way the Big Three saw it, though, the rookie wasn’t ready, he’d been given too big a role too soon, and he should stop shooting so much. From their perspective, the team was better when the offense revolved around them.

Tensions built to a boiling point. In late October, Seymour told the Post-Dispatch that Lovellette “has been pouting for a month” and has complained about “not getting the ball.” Seymour also said one of the Big Three came to him and said Hill was getting too much publicity and should be benched.

“Never before was it more obvious that we needed a fast backcourt man, an outside scorer like Hill, an exceptional talent, but the big guys up front wouldn’t play with him,” Seymour told Bob Broeg of the Post-Dispatch. “Jealous, no doubt. Protecting those big salaries, I guess. Imagine, telling me the kid was getting too much publicity.”

On Nov. 8, Hill scored 20 points and snared 12 rebounds against the Lakers. He made half his shots the next game, finishing with 16 against Detroit. Then he sank six of nine and totaled 16 points versus Cincinnati.

It appeared Hill was finding a groove, but Ben Kerner, acting on behalf of the Big Three, ordered Seymour to remove the rookie from the starting lineup.

Reluctantly, Seymour did so, but he was seething.

Speaking at a luncheon in Detroit, before the Hawks played the Pistons, Seymour told the audience, “I’d trade any of our top players and that includes Bob Pettit … There are no untouchables any more on my club.”

Two days later, Nov. 17, 1961, with the Hawks’ record at 5-9, Kerner fired Seymour. “I couldn’t run a smooth club with the bad feeling between team and coach,” Kerner told the Globe-Democrat.

Seymour said he was fired because he insisted, against the wishes of the Big Three, to start Hill.  “I’d just rather lose my job doing what I think is right,” Seymour said to the Globe-Democrat.

Regarding the Big Three, he told the newspaper, “They didn’t help the kid but were against him. That’s my only gripe, the way they boycotted the kid … It takes the heart out of you when your own team players won’t help you … I wouldn’t treat a dog the way they treated him.”

Hill’s take on the Big Three was, “They knew they were getting paid for the points they scored, and, here I was, taking their points … It wasn’t racial. It was points,” he told the Newark Star-Ledger.

Pettit said to the Associated Press, “There’s nothing we want more than for Cleo Hill to be the greatest ballplayer in the world. We don’t care who plays or who scores as long as we win. I know I speak for Cliff (Hagan) and Clyde (Lovellette).”

New directions

Kerner asked Pettit to fill in as interim coach until a replacement for Seymour could be hired. In Pettit’s first game in that role, Hill played a total of two minutes.

Fuzzy Levane, who’d coached the Hawks when they were based in Milwaukee, took over for the remainder of the season and used Hill sparingly. The Hawks finished 29-51. Hill averaged 5.5 points in 58 games during his only NBA season.

Harry Gallatin became the next Hawks coach, and he cut Hill from the roster before the 1962-63 season. No other NBA team was interested in him.

Hill went on to play in the lower levels of professional basketball with the Philadelphia Tapers of the American Basketball League and then the Trenton Colonials, New Haven Elms and Scranton Miners of the Eastern League.

Putting his college degree to use, Hill became an elementary school teacher in New Jersey and then the basketball coach at Essex County College in Newark. His record in 24 seasons there was 489-128.

Back home in Syracuse, Paul Seymour worked in real estate, owned a liquor store and coached basketball at Onondaga Community College from 1962-64. He returned to the NBA as coach of Baltimore (1965-66) and Detroit (1968-69).

In a letter he sent to Hill, Seymour wrote, “Occasionally, I get disgusted thinking what happened to you (in the NBA). I believe you got white-balled.”

Posted in Executives, Games, Prospects | 13 Comments »

Randy Jones reached lofty heights by staying grounded

December 8, 2025 by retrosimba

To get batters out in the big leagues, Randy Jones needed to make them hit the ball on the ground.

That’s what the Padres left-hander did when he pitched his most impressive game _ a 10-inning one-hitter to beat the Cardinals in 1975. Twenty-two of the 30 outs were ground balls.

When batters lifted the ball in the air against Jones, bad stuff often happened _ like the game at St. Louis when Hector Cruz and Lou Brock hit inside-the-park home runs to beat him in 1976.

A 20-game winner the season after he lost 22, and recipient of the 1976 National League Cy Young Award, Jones was 75 when he died on Nov. 18, 2025.

Portrait of a prospect

Randy Jones grew up in Brea, Calif., near Anaheim. Another prominent big-league pitcher, Walter Johnson, spent his teen years there after his family moved from Kansas. Looking to cash in on an oil boom, the Johnsons settled in the village of Olinda, now a Brea neighborhood.

Jones liked baseball and followed the Dodgers (his favorite players were Sandy Koufax and Tommy Davis). He showed promise as a pitcher. In 1963, when Jones was 13, his school principal asked a friend, Washington Senators left-hander Claude Osteen, to give the teen a pitching lesson. Osteen emphasized to Jones the importance of throwing strikes and keeping the ball down in the zone.

“He had a good sinker, even at 13,” Osteen recalled to The Sporting News, “but he threw sidearm. I advised him to throw more overhanded, or three-quarters.”

Jones went on to pitch in high school and at Chapman College, but arm ailments caused him to lose velocity. In explaining why he’d offered Jones only a partial baseball scholarship in 1968, University of Southern California (USC) coach Rod Dedeaux told columnist Jim Murray, “He’s only got half a fastball.”

Padres scouts Marty Keough and Cliff Ditto saw enough to recommend Jones. The Padres picked him in the fifth round of the 1972 amateur draft. Keough (who later scouted for the Cardinals) told Dave Anderson of the New York Times, “He threw strikes … and he got people out.”

Welcome to The Show

Duke Snider and Jackie Brandt, the former Cardinal, were Jones’ managers in the minors, but the person who had the biggest influence on him there was pitching instructor Warren Hacker. A former Cub and the uncle of future Cardinals coach Rich Hacker, Warren Hacker “taught me to throw a better sinker,” Jones told the New York Times. “He showed me how to place my fingers differently and how to apply pressure with them.”

The sinker became the pitch that got Jones to the big leagues just a year after he was drafted. His debut with the Padres came in June 1973 versus the Mets. The first batter to get a hit against Jones was 42-year-old Willie Mays, who blasted his 656th career home run over the wall in left-center at Shea Stadium. Boxscore

A week later, Jones made his first start, at home versus the Braves, and Hank Aaron, 39, became the second player to slug a homer against him. It was the 692nd of Aaron’s career. “The home run came off a fastball outside,” Aaron told United Press International. “The kid got it up. Had it been down a little, I probably would have popped it up.” Boxscore

Facing Aaron and Mays, who were big-leaguers before Jones started kindergarten, wasn’t the end of the rookie’s storybook experiences. His first big-league win came in the ballpark, Dodger Stadium, where Jones’ father took him as a youth to cheer for the home team. Jones beat them, pitching a four-hitter and getting 18 outs on ground balls. Dazed, he told The Sporting News, “I finished the ninth inning and didn’t realize the game was over.” Boxscore

Reconstruction project

Based on Jones’ seven wins as a rookie, including a shutout of the 1973 Mets (who were on their way to becoming National League champions), the Padres had high hopes for him in 1974, but Jones instead posted an 8-22 record. Though the Padres scored two or fewer runs in 17 of those losses, lack of support wasn’t the sole reason for the poor mark. Jones’ pitching deteriorated as the season progressed (4.46 ERA in August; 6.23 in September.) “My confidence was completely shot,” he told The Sporting News.

After the season, the Padres hired pitching coach Tom Morgan. As Angels pitching coach, Morgan turned Nolan Ryan into an ace by getting him to alter his shoulder motion. “If you ask me who had more influence on me than anybody in my career, I’d have to say Tom Morgan,” Ryan told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Morgan did for Jones what he’d done for Ryan. “He said I was opening up too soon with my right shoulder, that I wasn’t pushing off the rubber with my left foot, that I was pitching stiff-legged and that I was throwing all arm and no body,” Jones said to The Sporting News.

In short, Jones told the Los Angeles Times, Morgan “basically reconstructed my delivery … He gave me the fundamentals to be consistent.”

The turnaround was immediate. Jones was 20-12 with a league-best 2.24 ERA in 1975. He won two one-hitters _ versus the Cardinals and Reds.

Luis Melendez (who batted .248 for his career, but .571 against Jones) singled sharply to open the seventh for the lone St. Louis hit. The Cardinals managed just two fly balls. “It was the best game of my career because of all the ground balls the Cardinals hit,” Jones told the Associated Press. Boxscore

Two months later, facing a lineup featuring Pete Rose, Johnny Bench and Tony Perez, Jones gave up only a double to Bill Plummer and beat a Big Red Machine team headed for a World Series championship. He got 20 outs on ground balls. Boxscore

After Jones induced 22 ground-ball outs in a three-hit shutout of the Braves, pitcher Phil Niekro said to The Sporting News, “You get the feeling he can make the batter ground the ball to shortstop almost any time he wants to.” Boxscore

Location and movement

Jones basically relied on a sinker and slider. Roger Craig, who became Jones’ pitching coach (1976-77) and then manager (1978-79), said Jones threw a sinker 60 to 70 percent of the time, and a slider the other 30 to 40 percent. “Craig estimates that Jones’ sinker breaks down five to 10 inches and breaks away up to six inches from a right-handed batter,” the New York Times reported.

Jones’ fastball was clocked at about 75 mph. Foes and teammates alike kidded him that it was more like 27 mph.

In rating pitchers for the Philadelphia Daily News, Pete Rose said “the two who gave me the most trouble were Jim Brewer and Randy Jones.”

Rose was a career .183 hitter versus Jones. “Randy had him crazy,” Padres catcher Fred Kendall told the New York Times. Kendall recalled when Rose stood at the plate and yelled to Jones, “Throw hard, damn it, throw hard.”

Cardinals first baseman Ron Fairly told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1975, “He has a sinker. That’s all it is, and not a very hard one at that.”

Fairly’s teammate, Keith Hernandez, saw it differently. In his book “I’m Keith Hernandez,” the 1979 National League batting champion said of Jones, “Anyone who dismissed him as a soft tosser missed the point. With a hard sinker and a wicked hard slider, much like Tommy John’s, Randy threw his fastball hard enough to keep hitters off-balance.”

As Jones told The Sporting News, “My fastball is good enough that I can come inside on right-handed hitters and keep them honest.”

Jones also put batters out of synch by working fast. A game with Jones and Jim Kaat as starting pitchers was completed in one hour, 29 minutes. Jones finished a two-hitter versus Larry Dierker and the Astros in one hour, 37 minutes. Boxscore and Boxscore

Six of Jones’ 1975 wins came in games lasting less than one hour, 45 minutes.

Ups and downs

Jones followed his 20-win season of 1975 with a league-leading 22 wins and the Cy Young Award in 1976. He also was first in the league in innings pitched (315.1) and complete games (25), and had a stretch of 68 innings without issuing a walk.

Though the Cardinals were a mess (72-90) that season, they played like the Gashouse Gang when facing Jones. He was 1-3 against them.

On June 18, 1976, the Cardinals snapped Jones’ seven-game winning streak with a 7-4 victory at Busch Memorial Stadium.

In the fourth inning, with Ted Simmons on second, Hector Cruz (hitless against Jones in his career) drove a high pitch deep to left-center. Willie Davis leapt and got his glove on the ball, but, when he hit the wall, the ball popped free and shot toward the infield. Cruz circled the bases for an inside-the-park home run.

An inning later, with Don Kessinger on first, Lou Brock (a career .190 hitter versus Jones) punched a pitch to right-center. The ball hit a seam in the AstroTurf, bounced over Davis’ head and rolled to the wall. Brock streaked home with the second inside-the-park homer of the game. “The odds are real strong on that not happening again,” Jones told the Post-Dispatch. Boxscore

In October 1976, Jones had surgery to repair a severed nerve in the bicep tendon of his left arm. He never had another winning season, finishing with a career mark of 100-123.

Terrific tutor

Back home in Poway, Calif., Jones placed an ad in a local newspaper, offering private pitching instruction. Joe Zito signed up his son, 12-year-old Barry Zito, at a cost of $50 per lesson. “We had it,” Joe Zito recalled to the New York Times. “It was the food money.”

The lessons took place in the backyard of Jones’ hilltop home. Getting pitching tips from a Cy Young Award winner was something “I would kind of marvel at,” Barry Zito told the Associated Press.

According to the New York Times, Jones tutored Zito, a left-hander, once a week for more than three years and videotaped their sessions. Jones used a tough-love approach. One time, after Zito kept throwing pitches into the middle of the strike zone, Jones yelled, “We’re not playing darts. Never throw at the bull’s-eye.”

Zito recalled to the Associated Press, “When I did something incorrectly, he’d spit tobacco juice on my shoes, Nike high-tops we could barely afford.”

Reminded of that, Jones told the wire service, “I had to get his attention, and that worked with Barry. He didn’t focus really well when we first started. By the time, he got into his teens, he locked in. He just kept getting better.”

In 2002, two years after reaching the majors with Oakland, Zito was a 23-game winner and recipient of the American League Cy Young Award.

Posted in Games, Opponents, Pitchers | 20 Comments »

How Lenny Wilkens got an assist in choosing right path

December 1, 2025 by retrosimba

They were a couple of neighborhood guys from the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Lenny and Tommy. Common names. Uncommon talents.

Lenny Wilkens and Tommy Davis grew up playing stickball and church league basketball against one another. At Boys High School, they became friends.

Davis was a prep baseball and basketball standout. Wilkens was trying to find his way. When Wilkens was a senior, he acted on Davis’ suggestion and went out for the basketball team. It opened the door to a lifetime of opportunity.

Wilkens became a player and coach in the NBA. He was elected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame for success in both roles. Davis became a big-league baseball player. He was a two-time National League batting champion and twice hit game-winning home runs against Bob Gibson.

St. Louis was where Wilkens began his pro career. The best of his eight seasons for the St. Louis Hawks was 1967-68 when the slender guard was runner-up to a giant, Wilt Chamberlain, for the NBA Most Valuable Player Award.

As a player, Wilkens twice led the NBA in assists (1969-70 and 1971-72). As a coach, he led the Seattle SuperSonics to a NBA title (1978-79) and amassed 1,332 wins. Only Gregg Popovich (1,390) and Don Nelson (1,335) achieved more wins as NBA coaches. Wilkens was 88 when he died on Nov. 9, 2025.

Hard road to travel

Wilkens was the son of a black father and white mother. He was about kindergarten age when his father, a chauffeur, died of a perforated ulcer.

Lenny’s mother, Henrietta, raised him and his three siblings in a cold-water tenement flat. Heat came from a coal stove. They survived “on powdered milk and peanut butter,” according to the New York Daily News.

“Quite frankly, it is a mystery to me how any kid was able to make it under such circumstances,” Rev. Thomas Mannion, a parish priest at Brooklyn’s Holy Rosary Catholic Church, told the New York Times.

Henrietta worked in a candy factory. At 8, Lenny got a job in a market, scrubbing floors and delivering groceries. Father Mannion became a surrogate dad. “I had great faith in him,” Wilkens said to the New York Times. “I’d get discouraged and sometimes pretty angry, but Father Mannion … was always there to prod me and keep me from giving up.”

In 1979, Wilkens’ wife, Marilyn, told the newspaper that Father Mannion “was a tremendous influence on (Lenny). He kept him out of trouble in those early days when Lenny was growing up in a very bad neighborhood.”

Wilkens was an altar boy. According to the Los Angeles Times, Tommy Davis recalled a day during their youth when police frisked Wilkens for switchblades and instead found only rosary beads. As Father Mannion told the New York Times, “He somehow rose above the neighborhood.”

The priest was among the first to teach Wilkens about basketball, “setting up chairs for Wilkens to dribble in and out of in the Holy Rosary gym,” according to the New York Daily News.

Get in the game

Wilkens had a bad experience the first time he tried out for the high school basketball team. Coach Mickey Fisher “inadvertently whacked him in the face with his hand as he demonstrated a technique,” the New York Daily News reported.

Offended, Wilkens left and stayed away from the basketball team his first three years in high school. Meanwhile, Tommy Davis developed into an all-city forward. As Davis recalled to United Press International, early in their senior year he said to his friend, “Come on out and play, man. You know Mickey didn’t mean it. You can make this team. We need you.”

Father Mannion also urged Wilkens to try out for the team because he saw basketball as a path to a college scholarship.

Wilkens relented and made the team for the 1955-56 season. However, he was scheduled to graduate in January 1956. So he played in just seven games before receiving his diploma and leaving school.

Undeterred, Father Mannion wrote to a friend, a priest, Rev. Aloysius Begley, athletic director at Providence College, and asked him to consider awarding Wilkens a basketball scholarship. Providence coach Joe Mullaney wanted Tommy Davis, but the Brooklyn Dodgers signed him. After Mullaney’s father scouted Wilkens in a New York summer tournament and recommended him, Providence gave the scholarship.

Wilkens was thin and barely taller than 6-foot. Though his features were frail, he had a basketball toughness honed from playing against older, bigger foes on the Brooklyn playgrounds. He was an aggressive defender and an electric playmaker. As Wayne Coffey of the New York Daily News noted, Wilkens had “the body of a twig and the hands of pickpocket, and a calm that followed him like a shadow.”

An economics major who spent summers working on Brooklyn docks loading cargo, Wilkens planned to teach. He was surprised when St. Louis selected him with the sixth pick in the first round of the 1960 NBA draft. The top two picks were Oscar Robertson (Cincinnati Royals) and Jerry West (Los Angeles Lakers).

“I never thought I was good enough to play up there,” Wilkens told the Springfield (Mass.) Republican. “Playing pro ball after I graduated from Providence wasn’t on my list of things to do.”

Tasked with trying to convince Wilkens he could succeed, St. Louis scout Stan Stutz took him to his first NBA game _ Hawks at Boston in the playoffs. “Stutz told me to watch the play of the Hawks guards (Sihugo Green and Johnny McCarthy),” Wilkens recalled to the Springfield newspaper. “After watching them, I told myself I could play as good as those guys. That’s when I decided I had a chance to make it in the NBA.”

The right stuff

Wilkens was correct about his abilities. He excelled in the NBA as a savvy backcourt talent and unassuming team leader. “The quietest man ever to come out of Brooklyn,” Frank Deford of Sports Illustrated described him.

When he joined the Hawks, Wilkens’ job was to pass the ball to the frontcourt trio of Bob Pettit, Cliff Hagan and Clyde Lovellette. “It was pattern ball, not really my game,” Wilkens told Sports Illustrated, “but you had to adjust to it.”

The cast of teammates eventually changed but Wilkens remained the constant, running the show on the floor. “He can dribble through a briar patch,” Sports Illustrated declared. “He knows the perfect pass to make and, perhaps more important, realizes that most often it need not be a fancy one … Best of all, he has the ability to pace a game, to enforce a tempo.”

Wilkens did it all without fanfare. Frank Deford described him as “shy, with mournful brown eyes.” Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times noted, “He looks constantly as if he got bad news from home or a telegram from the front. He makes a basset hound look happy.”

Before the 1967-68 season, coach Richie Guerin gave Wilkens the green light to run a fast-break offense and pressure defense. Wilkens made it work. He was the quarterback of a team that included Zelmo Beaty, Bill Bridges, Joe Caldwell, Lou Hudson and Paul Silas. The Hawks won 16 of their first 17 games. Wilkens “is more responsible for our success than anybody,” Guerin told Jim Murray.

For the season, Wilkens averaged 20 points and 8.3 assists per game. He had a triple double _ 30 points, 12 rebounds, 13 assists _ in an October game against the New York Knicks, and was unstoppable (39 points, 18 assists) in a January win versus Seattle. Game stats and Game stats

Hawks management declared the 1967-68 regular-season finale, a home game against Seattle, as “Lenny Wilkens Night.” In a halftime ceremony, the club gave him a green Cadillac and other gifts. Cardinals baseball outfielder Curt Flood, an artist, did an oil painting of Wilkens and presented it to him. Then Wilkens went back to work. He finished the game with 19 points and 19 assists. Game stats

Facing the San Francisco Warriors in the playoffs, the Hawks were beaten in four of six games. The second of their two wins came in Game 5 at home when Wilkens had 20 points and 10 assists. It turned out to be the last game for the Hawks in St. Louis. The franchise relocated to Atlanta in May 1968. Game stats

Enduring friendship

Wilkens never played for Atlanta. On Oct. 12, 1968, he was traded to Seattle for Walt Hazzard. Three days later, Tommy Davis was selected by the Seattle Pilots in the American League expansion draft.

More than a decade after Davis convinced Wilkens to try out for high school basketball, the two friends were reunited nearly 3,000 miles from Brooklyn as professional athletes in Seattle.

As a boy, baseball was Wilkens’ sport of choice, according to the New York Daily News. During the spring and summer of 1969, Wilkens seldom missed a Seattle Pilots home game, the Tacoma News Tribune reported. He’d wait for Davis outside the clubhouse afterward.

Though he was traded to Houston on Aug. 30, 1969, Davis at season’s end was the Pilots’ leader in RBI (80) and doubles (29).

Grateful for the time he and Wilkens had together that year, Davis told Sports Illustrated, “I love Lenny. He is … a true friend who can be depended upon … He is steadfast and honorable … I love Lenny for what he has achieved. He went in there with all those big guys and proved to them he could do it on quickness and guts and dedication. We used to say of him that he was like the man who wasn’t there _ he wasn’t there until you read the box score.”

 

 

Posted in Games, Hitters, Prospects | 13 Comments »

Scout’s honor: How Whitey Herzog became talent evaluator

November 24, 2025 by retrosimba

A player with the baseball smarts Whitey Herzog had didn’t need to be told when it was time to quit. It was autumn 1963. Herzog just turned 32, but his prime playing days had past. “His baseball epitaph could read: A Nice Guy Who Couldn’t Hit The Slow Curve,” Detroit columnist Joe Falls noted.

A journeyman outfielder, Herzog squeezed out every bit of talent he had, lasting eight seasons in the majors, mostly with losing teams, before the Tigers removed him from their big-league roster after the 1963 season. The Tigers offered him a role as player-coach at Syracuse, with a promise he’d be considered for a managerial job in their farm system some day, the Detroit Free Press reported. The Kansas City Athletics proposed he join them as a scout.

Herzog, though, was through with baseball. He could earn more ($16,000 a year) supervising construction workers for a company back home in Kansas City than he could coaching in the minors or pursuing prospects on the sandlots.

So Herzog took the construction job, but soon found he didn’t like it, mainly because he had little say in selecting the crew he was tasked with supervising. Hoping to trade his hard hat for a ball cap, Herzog asked the A’s if the scouting job still was open. It was, and he was hired to scout amateur players in 1964.

The scouting experience with the A’s, and then the Mets, gained Herzog a reputation as an astute talent evaluator and helped him develop the managing skills that would lead to his eventual election to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Going pro

As a teen in New Athens, Ill., Herzog was a good basketball player. “Your basic small, scrappy guard,” he said in “White Rat,” his autobiography. Herzog received seven college basketball scholarship offers, but he wanted to play pro baseball. He could run, throw and hit a fastball.

The St. Louis Browns made an offer: no signing bonus, a minor-league salary of $200 a month and a chance to pitch. Herzog said no. Actually, he claimed in his autobiography, he said to Browns scout Jack Fournier, “Now I know why you guys are in last place all the time, if you wanted to sign a wild-ass left-hander like me.”

On the day after he graduated from high school in 1949, Herzog was invited to a Yankees tryout camp in Branson, Mo. The Yankees told him he could make it as an outfielder. Heck, they said, Joe DiMaggio would be retiring just about the time Herzog should be ready for the majors. (What he didn’t know is that another prospect, Mickey Mantle, was signing with the Yankees in 1949, too.) Herzog took the Yankees’ offer of a $1,500 bonus and a minor-league salary of $150 a month.

Years later, Herzog told the Kansas City Star, “If I had gotten more money, it would have been all right, but I was foolish to sign for that kind of a bonus. I could have gone out and broken my leg the first year, and then where would I have been? If I had it to do over, I would have gone to college (on a basketball scholarship) and then signed a baseball contract.”

Tough breaks

Herzog played five seasons in the Yankees’ farm system and served a two-year Army hitch. He never did appear in a regular-season game for the Yankees, but he got to know their manager, Casey Stengel, during 1955 and 1956 spring training and developed a fondness for him. “Of all the managers I’ve ever played for, Casey had the most influence on me,” Herzog said in his autobiography. “Casey took a liking to me, spent a lot of time with me.”

On Easter Sunday in 1956, after attending a church service with Yankees players Tony Kubek and Bobby Richardson, Herzog was called up to Stengel’s hotel suite. “When I got there,” Herzog recalled in his autobiography, “I saw that Casey had already been celebrating Easter with a few drinks. He was rambling on.”

After a while, Stengel blurted out that Herzog was going to the majors _ with the Washington Senators. “Go over there and have a good year,” Stengel told him, “and I’ll get you back.”

As Herzog noted in his book, “I never had that good year, and I never wore the pinstripes in Yankee Stadium. In my heart, though, I was always a Yankee. I never got over the fact that they’d traded me.”

Herzog was with the Senators (1956-58), A’s (1958-60) and Orioles (1961-62) before being traded to the Tigers in November 1962. Going to Detroit meant he’d do a lot of sitting, not playing. Herzog was an outfielder and first baseman, and the Tigers had standouts with Rocky Colavito in left, Bill Bruton in center, Al Kaline in right and Norm Cash at first base. “There was no use kidding myself _ all those guys were better ballplayers than I was,” Herzog told the Kansas City Times.

To pass the time, Herzog told teammates he would keep count of the home runs he hit in batting practice all season.

“I hit my 250th in Detroit in late August,” Herzog told Kansas City journalist Joe McGuff. “(Coach) Bob Swift was pitching that day. I hit my 249th into the upper deck in right field. (Teammate) Gates Brown was standing by the batting cage and I told Gates I was really going to crank up and see if I could hit my 250th on the roof. Sure enough, I did. There was an usher nearby and I asked if he’d mind going up on the roof and getting the ball for me. He found it and brought it back. The ball landed in a big patch of tar. So it looked legitimate. I got it autographed (by teammates) and fixed up and I’ve got it in a trophy case at home.”

In Baltimore, on the day before the 1963 season finale, Herzog hit his 299th batting practice homer. “Everybody on the club knew I was going for my 300th on the last day,” he said, “so they told me I could keep hitting until I got 300. It rained that day and they had to call off batting practice, so I wound up with 299.”

A tiger in batting practice, Herzog was a pussycat in the games that season. He hit no homers and batted .151. “You’ll find no nicer guy on the Tigers than Whitey Herzog,” Joe Falls of the Detroit Free Press informed readers, “and it grieves us to see him struggling so much at the plate.”

Talent hunt

Jim Gleeson left the A’s scouting department to join the coaching staff of Yankees manager Yogi Berra, creating the opening for Herzog to quit the construction job and return to baseball.

Herzog displayed the same desire and determination for scouting amateurs as he had for playing in the pros. In June 1964, he told the Kansas City Star, “Last month, I saw 52 high school and college games. I’ve been averaging about 1,500 miles a week on the road. I’ve been seeing the country.”

Though he was competing with other scouts to sign talent, Herzog earned their respect. The scouts welcomed him into the fraternity and offered their advice on how to succeed.

“The old scouts like Bert Wells of the Dodgers and Fred Hawn of the Cardinals took him under their wing and really helped him,” Herzog’s colleague, Joe McDonald, recalled to Cardinals Yearbook in 2010. “He always talked about them. It’s not easy doing amateur scouting for the first time. You have to find ballparks (and) call the coach in advance to try to determine if the pitcher you want to see is pitching. You have to do all that preliminary work. Whitey did all that, which was a great foundation (to managing), because his evaluating skills matched his strategic ability in game situations. That was the key.”

The best of the 12 prospects Herzog signed in 1964 were Chuck Dobson, who went on to pitch nine seasons in the American League and won 74 games, and catcher Ken Suarez, who played seven seasons in the majors, including 1973 with the Rangers when Herzog managed them.

The one who got away was pitcher Don Sutton, the future Hall of Famer. “I had him in my hotel room, ready to sign an A’s contract for $16,000,” Herzog said in his autobiography. “What a bargain he would have been.”

The deal needed the approval of Charlie Finley, but the A’s owner wouldn’t go over $10,000. “I went out and told Bert Wells of the Dodgers that he ought to sign him,” Herzog said. The Dodgers did and Sutton went on to pitch 23 seasons in the majors, winning 324 games and pitching in four World Series, including three with the Dodgers and one with the Brewers against Herzog’s 1982 Cardinals.

Wise judge

After rejecting an offer to become head baseball coach at Kansas State, Herzog coached for the A’s in 1965 and for the Mets in 1966. He scouted pro talent as a special assistant to Mets general manager Bing Devine in 1967, then was promoted to director of player development. “The people in the organization reached the point where they relied more and more on my judgment about who to sign and who to get rid of,” Herzog said in his autobiography.

After the Mets vaulted from ninth-place finishers in 1968 to World Series champions in 1969, Herzog went to the victory party at Shea Stadium to congratulate manager Gil Hodges. In recalling the moment years later to Cardinals Yearbook, Herzog said, “When he saw me coming, he jumped out of his chair and said, ‘I want to congratulate you. Every time I’ve called you and asked for a ballplayer, you’ve sent me the right one.’ That meant a lot to me.”

Later, when Herzog managed the Royals to three division titles and then led the Cardinals to three National League pennants and a World Series championship, his skill as a talent evaluator often was cited as a significant factor in his success.

“It wasn’t just Whitey’s ability to manage a game,” Jim Riggleman, a coach on Herzog’s St. Louis staff before becoming a big-league manager, told Cardinals Yearbook. “There are other good game managers. It was his ability to evaluate talent. He knew who could play and who was on the last leg.”

Red Schoendienst, who managed St. Louis to two pennants and a World Series title before coaching for Herzog, said to Cardinals Yearbook, “You manage according to what you have. That’s what managing is all about, knowing your ballplayers … Whitey had a lot of practice judging players … He could see the kind of abilities they had and whether they just came out to play or if they were winners … Some guys just know how to win. Those are the guys you want.”

Posted in Executives, Hitters, Managers | 14 Comments »

How Lee Smith got wake-up calls on career and health

November 18, 2025 by retrosimba

In 2025, relief ace Lee Smith was interviewed by Jon Paul Morosi for the Baseball Hall of Fame podcast “The Road to Cooperstown.”

Here are excerpts:

Lee Arthur Smith was from rural Louisiana. On the recommendation of scout Buck O’Neil, the Cubs selected Smith in the second round of the 1975 amateur draft.

Smith: “I was playing sandlot baseball and we didn’t have a catcher, so I decided to catch … I had no chest protector … Buck comes looking for me. He said, ‘I’m looking for a boy named Lee Arthur.’ Nobody knew me as Lee Arthur … He said, ‘We’re thinking about drafting you.’ I said, ‘For the military?’ ”

When Smith was with minor-league Midland (Texas), his manager, former Cubs catcher Randy Hundley, converted him from starter to reliever. Objecting to the switch, Smith decided to quit and play college basketball for Northwestern State.

Smith: “That relief pitching thing I didn’t like. Back then, it was, you’re not good enough to start, so they threw you in the bullpen … My first love was basketball … Billy Williams (then a Cubs minor-league instructor) came to my house and talked to me (about returning to baseball) … I can’t say what he said, but it worked. That’s all that matters.”

(Smith reached the majors with the Cubs in September 1980 and became their closer in July 1982. Playing primarily for the Cubs, Cardinals and Red Sox, he earned 478 saves in 18 seasons.)

On taking naps during afternoon Cubs games at Wrigley Field:

Smith: “The best thing to do was to put a heating pad on your back and lay on the training room table. I’d be out … The job of the assistant trainer was to make sure I had on the right uniform and that I got there (to the bullpen) by the sixth inning … There’s nothing better than waking up with a three-run lead.”

On becoming buddies with the Wrigley Field grounds crew:

Smith: “I found they got time-and-a-half after 4:30. That started me doing that long, slow walk from the bullpen (to the mound). I said to them, ‘I’m taking my time so that you can send all your kids to college.’ … They made a mint off of me after the seventh inning. I took care of my grounds crew boys.”

On taking advantage of the shadows that covered home plate at Wrigley Field in late afternoons:

Smith: “I struck out Eric Davis looking to end a game. Eric complained to umpire Frank Pulli that the ball was a couple of inches outside. Frank said, ‘Yeah, but it sounded like a strike.’ ”

On playing for Cardinals manager Joe Torre before Torre went to the Yankees:

Smith: “He didn’t talk a whole lot. He’d bring me into the game, hand the ball to me and walk off. (Later), he compared me to (the Yankees’) Mariano Rivera and said, ‘Those were the only guys I’d just give the ball to and walk off the mound.’ ”

On having shortstop Ozzie Smith (no relation) as a Cardinals teammate:

Smith: “Ozzie used to give me a hard time about taking too much time between pitches … I love harassing him … He saved my butt a few times. When that ball was hit up the middle, I would think, base hit, and I’d look back and there was Ozzie. He always took good care of me.”

His interest in baseball history:

Smith: “I have a room in my house where I collect the memorabilia from the Negro League. I’m trying to do some (research) on Hilton Smith.”

On being diagnosed with cardiac amyloidosis, a buildup of abnormal proteins that thicken the heart muscle, preventing it from working as it should. Smith received a heart transplant in July 2024:

Smith: “My doctor told me I got a mulligan. My wife, Dyana, has taken care of me … I feel really good.”

According to the Mayo Clinic, amyloidosis occurs more commonly in men. People of African descent appear to be at higher risk. Smith was asked what advice he’d have for them.

Smith: “Get checkups. Get blood work. Listen to your wives.”

Posted in Pitchers | 11 Comments »

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