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Paying it forward: How Marty Marion helped Luis Aparicio

Posted in Games, Hitters, Managers, Pitchers on January 26, 2026| 12 Comments »

On his way to becoming the first Venezuelan to get elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, shortstop Luis Aparicio received a big early boost from a former Cardinals standout at the position.

Marty Marion was the White Sox manager who brought Aparicio to the major leagues and made him the starting shortstop as a rookie in 1956.

Nicknamed “Mr. Shortstop,” Marion was the starter on four Cardinals pennant winners in the 1940s and the first shortstop to win the National League Most Valuable Player Award.

Aparicio merely had two years of minor-league experience when Marion picked him to be the White Sox shortstop. It was an astute decision. Aparicio won the American League Rookie of the Year Award and went on to have a stellar career. He earned the Gold Glove Award nine times, led the American League in stolen bases for nine years in a row (1956-64) and totaled 2,677 hits. Video

Elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1984, Aparicio is one of several Venezuelans who have achieved prominence in the big leagues. Others (in alphabetical order) include Bobby Abreu, Ronald Acuna Jr., Jose Altuve, Miguel Cabrera, Dave Concepcion, Andres Galarraga, Freddy Garcia, Ozzie Guillen, Felix Hernandez, Magglio Ordonez, Salvador Perez, Johan Santana, Manny Trillo, Omar Vizquel and Carlos Zambrano.

The first Venezuelan to play in the majors was pitcher Alex Carrasquel with the 1939 Washington Senators. The first Venezuelan to play for the Cardinals was outfielder Vic Davalillo in 1969. Besides Davalillo and Andres Galarraga, other Venezuelans who were noteworthy Cardinals included Miguel Cairo, Willson Contreras, Cesar Izturis, Jose Martinez and Edward Mujica.

Baseball genes

Aparicio was from the seaport city of Maracaibo in northwestern Venezuela. According to the encyclopedia Britannica, “Until petroleum was discovered in 1917, the city was a small coffee port. Within a decade it became the oil metropolis of Venezuela and South America. It has remained a city of contrasts _ old Spanish culture and modern business, ancient Indian folklore and distinctive modern architecture.”

Aparicio’s father (also named Luis) was a standout shortstop in Latin America and was known as “El Grande,” the great one. When the father retired as a player during a ballpark ceremony in 1953, he handed his glove to his 19-year-old son and they embraced amid tears.

While playing winter baseball in Venezuela for Caracas, young Luis Aparicio got the attention of White Sox general manager Frank Lane and scout Harry Postove. Cleveland Indians coach Red Kress also was in pursuit of the prospect. After the White Sox paid $6,000 to Caracas team president Pablo Morales, Aparicio signed with the White Sox for $4,000, The Sporting News reported.

The White Sox sent Aparicio, 20, to Waterloo, Iowa, in 1954. The Waterloo White Hawks were a Class B farm club managed by former catcher Wally Millies. Aparicio “couldn’t speak a word of English,” according to Arthur Daley of the New York Times, but language was no barrier to his ability to play in the minors. Before a double hernia ended his season in July, he produced 110 hits in 94 games for Waterloo and had 20 stolen bases. Wally Millies filed a glowing report to the White Sox: “Aparicio has an excellent chance to make the big leagues.”

On the rise

Returning to Venezuela for the winter, Aparicio hired a tutor and learned English. The White Sox invited him to their 1955 spring training camp. That’s when Marty Marion got a look at him.

After managing the Cardinals (1951) and Browns (1952-53), Marion was a White Sox coach in 1954. He became their manager in September 1954 after Paul Richards left to join the Orioles.

Marion liked what he saw of Aparicio at 1955 spring training and it was he who suggested the shortstop skip the Class A level of the minors and open the season with the Class AA Memphis Chickasaws.

Aparicio responded to the challenge, totaling 154 hits and 48 steals. He dazzled with his range and throwing arm. David Bloom of the Memphis Commercial Appeal deemed Aparicio “worth the price of admission as a single attraction.”

Memphis had two managers in 1955. Jack Cassini, who was the second baseman and manager, had to step down in early August after being hit in the face by a pitch. Retired Hall of Fame pitcher Ted Lyons, the White Sox’s career leader in wins (260), replaced Cassini. Both praised Aparicio in reports to the White Sox.

Cassini: “He does everything well.”

Lyons: “Aparicio plays major league shortstop right now … Can’t miss.”

Lyons, who played 21 seasons in the majors and spent another nine there as a manager and coach, told The Sporting News, “The kid’s quick as a flash and has a remarkable throwing arm. He’s dead sure on a ground ball and makes the double play as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He’s one of the greatest fielding shortstops I have ever seen.”

Ready and able

Based on the reports he got on Aparicio during the summer following his firsthand observations in spring training, Marion urged the White Sox front office to trade shortstop Chico Carrasquel so that Aparicio could step into the job in 1956. Carrasquel was sent to Cleveland for outfielder Larry Doby in October 1955.

The move was bold and risky. A Venezuelan and nephew of Alex Carrasquel, Chico Carrasquel was an American League all-star in four of his six seasons with the White Sox, and the first Latin American to play and start in an All-Star Game.

Marion and others, however, became disenchanted with Carrasquel’s increasingly limited fielding range. “I was amazed when I watched Carrasquel (in 1955),” White Sox player personnel executive John Rigney told The Sporting News. “He had slowed up so much he didn’t look like the same player.”

Marion said to reporter John C. Hoffman in January 1956, “I know Luis Aparicio is a better shortstop right now than Carrasquel was last year … I saw enough of him last spring during training to know he’s quicker than Chico and a better hustler.”

Aparicio showed at 1956 spring training he was ready for the job. As Arthur Daley noted in the New York Times, Aparicio “has extraordinary reflexes as well as the speed afoot to give him the widest possible range. He breaks fast for a ball and his hands move with such lightning rapidity that his glove smothers the hops before they have a chance to bounce bad. He gets the ball away swiftly to set up double plays and ranks as probably the slickest shortstop in the business.”

Marion was impressed by all facets of Aparicio’s game and his ability to mesh with second baseman Nellie Fox. (Aparicio and his wife Sonia later named a son Nelson in honor of Fox.)

“I’m certain now that he’ll be twice the shortstop that Carrasquel was last year,” Marion told The Sporting News in March 1956.

Rookie sensation

Marion considered putting Aparicio in the leadoff spot, but instead batted him eighth. “He has all the physical equipment for becoming a wonderful leadoff man, but at the moment he still lacks the ability to draw walks,” Marion explained to The Sporting News. “Once he gets that, he’ll be one of the best. Drawing walks is something that comes with experience. He has to sharpen his knowledge of the strike zone and then develop the confidence to lay off those pitches that are just an inch or two off the plate.”

Once the season got under way, the rest of the American League joined Marion in voicing their admiration of the rookie. Aparicio played especially well versus the powerhouse Yankees. He hit .316 against them, including .395 in 11 games at Yankee Stadium, and fielded superbly.

“He is not only the best rookie in the league; we’d have to say he was the best shortstop,” Yankees manager Casey Stengel exclaimed to the Chicago Tribune.

Yankees shortstop Phil Rizzuto, in the final season of a Hall of Fame career, said to The Sporting News, “As a fielding shortstop, Aparicio is the best I ever saw.”

Rizzuto said Aparicio’s superior range reminded him of Marty Marion with the Cardinals. Marion, though, told The Sporting News, “He has to be better than I was. He covers twice the ground that I did.”

In August 1956, Marion moved Aparicio to the leadoff spot. Aparicio batted .291 there in 31 games, with a respectable .345 on-base percentage. “We frankly didn’t think he would come along quite this fast,” Marion told the Chicago Tribune.

Aparicio completed his rookie season with 142 hits and 21 stolen bases. He batted .295 with runners in scoring position and .412 with the bases loaded. He made 35 errors, but also led the league’s shortstops in assists and putouts.

Changing times

The 1956 White Sox finished in third place at 85-69, 12 games behind the champion Yankees. On Oct. 25, White Sox vice-president Chuck Comiskey summoned Marion to a meeting. When it ended, Marion no longer was manager.

“The White Sox called it a resignation and Marty, always agreeable, went along with this label,” Edward Prell of the Chicago Tribune noted. “Marion’s official statement of resignation, however, sounded like one of those Russian confessions,” departing “in the best interest of the club.”

According to the Tribune, “It was known that Marion’s insistence on keeping Aparicio eighth in the batting order did not set well with some of the White Sox officials. They thought Marty should be … having him lead off.”

Days later, the White Sox hired Al Lopez, who led Cleveland to a pennant and five second-place finishes in six years as manager. In the book “We Played the Game,” White Sox pitcher Billy Pierce said Marion “did a very good job with us. I didn’t know why he didn’t stay with us longer, other than that Al Lopez was available.”

Marion never managed again.

With Aparicio the centerpiece of a team that featured speed, defense and pitching, Lopez led the White Sox to the 1959 pennant, their first in 40 years.

Traded to the Orioles in January 1963, Aparicio joined third baseman Brooks Robinson in forming an iron-clad left side of the infield. In “We Played the Game,” Robinson said, “Luis was just a sensational player … He was the era’s best-fielding shortstop. He had so much range that I could cheat more to the (third-base) line.”

With their pitching and defense limiting the Dodgers to two runs in four games, the Orioles swept the 1966 World Series.

Aparicio was traded back to the White Sox in November 1967. He spent his last three seasons with the Red Sox.

Tradition of excellence

When Ozzie Guillen was a boy in Venezuela, he idolized Luis Aparicio. Guillen became a shortstop. In 1985, he reached the majors with the White Sox and won the American League Rookie of the Year Award. He eventually became an all-star and earned a Gold Glove Award, too.

In 2005, as White Sox manager, Guillen led them to their first pennant since the 1959 team did it with Aparicio. Before Game 1 of the World Series at Chicago against the Astros, Guillen got behind the plate and caught the ceremonial first pitch from Aparicio.

The White Sox went on to sweep the Astros, winning their first World Series title since 1917.

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Browns, Cardinals joined race to sign Jim Thorpe

Posted in Games, Hitters, Opponents, Prospects on January 19, 2026| 10 Comments »

St. Louis tried to attract the nation’s best athlete at a time when its teams, Browns and Cardinals, were the worst in major-league baseball. Jim Thorpe, however, chose to enter the majors at the top, with the 1913 New York Giants.

A two-time Olympic gold medalist in track and field as well as a football standout, Thorpe wasn’t as prominent in baseball. For six seasons in the National League with the Giants, Reds and Braves, he mostly was a spare outfielder.

The team Thorpe did best against was St. Louis. A career .252 hitter, Thorpe batted .314 overall versus the Cardinals and .339 in games played at St. Louis.

Bright Path

A citizen of the Sac and Fox Nation, James Francis Thorpe and a twin brother, Charles, were born in what is now Oklahoma. (Charles died of pneumonia as a youth.) Jim Thorpe also was known as Wa-Tho-Huck, which in the Sac and Fox language means “Bright Path,” according to the Oklahoma Historical Society.

After attending schools in Oklahoma and Kansas, Thorpe enrolled at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania when he was 16 in 1903 and excelled in athletics, especially football and track, for coach Pop Warner.

Thorpe also was proficient at archery, baseball, basketball, canoeing, handball, hockey, horsemanship, lacrosse, rifle shooting, skating, squash and swimming, according to The Sporting News.

Carolina in my mind

Taking a break from Carlisle in 1909, Thorpe, 22, signed to play minor-league baseball for the Rocky Mount (N.C.) Railroaders, a Class D club in the Eastern Carolina League. He was paid $12.50 to $15 per week, plus room and board, team secretary E.G. Johnston told the Rocky Mount Telegram.

A right-hander, Thorpe pitched and played right field. Speed was his main attribute. Eyewitness accounts told of him scoring from first on a single to right and racing to the plate from second on an infield out. His statistics that season were nothing special (9-10 record, .254 batting mark), but he was the talk of the town. A local sports reporter, Sam Mallison, noted, “Few Rocky Mount citizens had ever seen one of these original Americans.”

Rocky Mount was a segregated town of about 8,000 in 1909. It had a prominent railroad yard, cotton mills and tobacco farms. At that time, “The horse and buggy still provided the principal method of transportation between points not connected by the railroad,” Sam Mallison recalled in the Rocky Mount Telegram. “There were no hard-surfaced highways and few paved streets.”

As for baseball, Thomas McMillan Sr. wrote in the Telegram, “In those days, the players dressed for the game in their rooms (and) walked to the ballpark. Many stayed at the new Cambridge Hotel, a short block north of the passenger train station. The players would be met by a crowd of little boys as they came out of the hotel. Each boy sought the privilege of carrying the shoes or glove or bat for one of the ballplayers. Carrying a glove or a pair of shoes meant free admission to the game. I was one of those little boys and big Jim Thorpe seemed to favor me as his shoes and glove caddy. I remember Jim perfectly. Black hair, black eyes, high cheekbones in a mahogany face, and a physique that gave an impression of strength rather than mere size. His movements were quick and lithe.”

Thorpe returned to Rocky Mount in 1910, but the luster was lost. According to Sam Mallison, “(Thorpe’s) custom, in the early evening, was to take a snoot full … As time went on, (drinking) took hold of Jim earlier in the day, occasionally before the noon hour, and this, plus the fact that opposing pitchers had learned he was a sucker for a curveball on the outside (corner), diminished his speed and caused his batting average to plummet … (Thorpe) had ceased to be such an enormous gate attraction, and his antics were the despair of both the field manager and the front office. He ignored the rules and was wholly unresponsive to managerial direction. In short, he became a problem child.”

That summer, Thorpe was traded to the Fayetteville (N.C.) Highlanders and finished the 1910 season with them.

Glory and scandal

Thorpe re-enrolled at Carlisle and rocketed toward his athletic peak. He gained national fame as a consensus first-team football all-America in 1911 and 1912. He rose to worldwide prominence at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, winning gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon. Thorpe was the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the United States.

“To a whole generation of American sports lovers, Jim Thorpe was the greatest athlete of them all,” the New York Times declared. “No one has equaled the hold that he had on the imagination of all who saw him in action … He was a magnificent performer.”

In January 1913, after the International Olympic Committee learned of Thorpe’s minor-league ballplaying, it was determined he had competed in the 1912 Games as a professional, violating the rules of amateurism. He was stripped of his medals and his achievements were erased from the Olympic records. “The committee’s insistence that the Olympics are amateur is as fatuous as its insistence that sports should never be soiled by politics,” the New York Times opined.

(In July 2022, 69 years after Thorpe’s death, the International Olympic Committee declared him sole winner of the 1912 Olympic decathlon and pentathlon.)

Looking to extend his athletic career, Thorpe saw big-league baseball as offering the best path. (The American Professional Football Association, which became the NFL, wasn’t established until 1920).

On the money

Thorpe got offers from five big-league clubs _ Browns, Giants, Pirates, Reds and White Sox, the New York Times reported.

The Browns had more than 100 losses in three consecutive seasons (1910-12) and would finish in last place in the American League at 57-96 in 1913, but club owner Robert Hedges was serious about a pursuit of Thorpe. Hedges had scout Pop Kelchner try to woo Thorpe to St. Louis. On Kelchner’s recommendation, the Browns acquired a minor-league shortstop, Mike Balenti. He and Thorpe played together in the Carlisle football team backfield. The Browns hoped having Balenti would help them land Thorpe.

On Jan. 24, 1913, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported, “It was learned yesterday that Jim Thorpe … had promised Hedges that if he played ball in professional circles he would join the Browns.”

A week later, though, Thorpe signed with the Giants. Led by manager John McGraw, the Giants won National League pennants in 1911 and 1912. They’d go to the World Series again in 1913. Perhaps most important of all to Thorpe was the money. The Giants offered a salary of more than $5,000, the New York Times reported. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Thorpe got a $6,000 salary and a $500 signing bonus, and Carlisle coach Pop Warner got $2,500 from the Giants for steering Thorpe to them.

“There are very few $6,000 ballplayers in the game today,” St. Louis columnist Sid Keener noted. According to Keener, that select group included Ty Cobb, Ed Konetchy, Nap Lajoie, Christy Mathewson and Tris Speaker.

Though McGraw never had seen Thorpe play, he told the New York World, “A wonderful athlete like Thorpe ought to have in him the makings of a great ballplayer. He has the muscle and the brain, and it is up to me to locate the spot where he will be of most value to the team.”

Cardinals calling

After seeing Thorpe in spring training, McGraw determined the best spot for him was on the bench, or maybe the minors. Thorpe, who turned 26 that year, was plenty fast and strong, but he misjudged fly balls, didn’t slide properly and couldn’t hit the curve consistently.

In April 1913, before the regular season got under way, McGraw apparently considered placing Thorpe on waivers. If Thorpe was available, Cardinals manager Miller Huggins was determined to get him.

“Jim Thorpe … may become a Cardinal,” the Bridgeport Times of Connecticut reported. “All that is needed for (Thorpe) to join the (Cardinals) is for John McGraw to accept an offer made by Miller Huggins. It is believed that waivers have been asked on Thorpe because Huggins sent the following telegram to McGraw: Will take Thorpe off your hands. What is his salary?”

According to the New York Herald, Huggins said the Cardinals, destined to finish with the worst record in the majors (51-99) that year, would spend “the extreme limit” for Thorpe.

Huggins told Sid Keener, “I believe Thorpe can be developed into a ballplayer. He has what I want _ speed. It may be that he will need plenty of seasoning, but I would be willing to carry him a year or so as a utility player.”

The Cardinals’ eagerness to take Thorpe apparently gave McGraw pause. He decided Thorpe would remain with the Giants. “I can make a first-class player of him,” McGraw said, according to the Montpelier (Vermont) Morning Journal.

Playing on

Thorpe stuck with the Giants in 1913 and 1914, but rarely played. He spent most of 1915 in the minors. Sent to minor-league Milwaukee in 1916, Thorpe made significant progress. He led Milwaukee in total bases (240) and hits (157).

In 1917, the Giants loaned Thorpe to the Reds. McGraw’s friend and former ace, Christy Mathewson, was the Reds’ manager. In a game against the Cardinals, Thorpe had two hits and two RBI. In another, at St. Louis, he totaled four hits, three RBI and scored twice. Boxscore and Boxscore

Thorpe’s highlight with the Reds, though, came in a game at Chicago. Fred Toney of the Reds and Hippo Vaughn of the Cubs each pitched nine hitless innings. In the 10th, Thorpe’s single versus Vaughn drove in a run and the Reds won, 1-0. Boxscore

After four months with the Reds, Thorpe was returned to the Giants. He played for them in 1918, then was traded to the Braves. Thorpe hit .327 for Boston in 1919 and .354 versus the Cardinals. It wasn’t enough to keep him in the majors, but he wasn’t through with baseball. Thorpe played three more seasons in the minors and thrived, batting .360 for Akron in 1920 and .358 for Toledo in 1921.

Meanwhile, when the American Professional Football Association began in 1920, Thorpe was welcomed in as player-coach of the Canton Bulldogs.

In 1925, Thorpe, 38, was a running back with the NFL New York Giants. He is one of two men who played for both the NFL and baseball New York Giants. The other, Steve Filipowicz, was an outfielder with the baseball Giants (1944-45) and a running back with the football Giants (1945-46).

Thorpe finally got to play for the Cardinals, too. His last NFL game was with the Chicago Cardinals in 1929.

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How Alfredo Cabrera went from Canarian to Cardinal

Posted in Games, Hitters, Prospects on January 5, 2026| 16 Comments »

The distance between the Canary Islands and St. Louis is 4,300 miles. It took Alfredo Cabrera 32 years to make the trek.

Cabrera is the only person born in the Canary Islands to play baseball in the big leagues. The shortstop was 32 when he debuted with the Cardinals in 1913.

His time in the majors, however, was as fleeting as a glimpse of a canary in the wild. Cabrera appeared in one game, played four innings and never returned.

Instead, he had a long professional playing career in Cuba and as a Hispanic minor-league baseball pioneer in the northeastern United States.

Island hopping

Formed by volcanic eruptions that created black sand beaches along crystal-clear turquoise water, the Canary Islands of Spain are within 65 miles of Africa’s northwestern coast. Wild canaries are a native species of the islands. (Cardinals, however, are not.)

Alfredo Cabrera was born in the Canary Islands on May 11, 1881. He was a descendant of Guanches, the indigenous people of the islands, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Cabrera arrived at a time when the Canary Islands transitioned from an agricultural economy (largely bananas and sugar cane) to tourism as steamships carried winter-weary visitors to the port of Las Palmas.

Though raised in the Canary Islands, Cuba became Cabrera’s home. He “most likely sailed from the Canary Islands to Cuba around 1900, as a teenager, and almost immediately established himself as a gifted baseball player,” according to Erik Malinowski of the Society for American Baseball Research.

In 1901, when Cabrera turned 20, he made his professional baseball debut in the Cuban League. He spent 18 seasons in Latin leagues, primarily with Almendares, and was player-manager for part of that time, according to Seamheads.com. Cabrera was inducted into the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame in 1942.

Integrating the minors

Cabrera was part of a team, the Baseball Stars of Cuba, that toured the United States in 1906. Charles Humphrey, owner of the New Britain club in the Connecticut State League, was impressed by how the Cubans played. Humphrey went to Havana and recruited four Cubans _ third baseman Rafael Almeida, outfielder Armando Marsans, pitcher Luis Padron and the shortstop, Cabrera _ to play for New Britain in 1908, according to Weston Ulbrich of the Greater Hartford Twilight Baseball League.

Humphrey named the New Britain club the Perfectos.

Bigots objected to the newcomers joining an all-white league. Recalling those days, Dan Porter of the New York Daily Mirror wrote in 1933, “As a kid, I saw a half dozen Cuban players break into organized baseball in the old Connecticut League. I refer to players like Marsans, Almeida, Cabrera and others. I recall the storm of protest from the One Hundred Per Centers at that time but I also recall that all the Cubans conducted themselves in such a manner that they reflected nothing but credit on themselves and those who favored admitting them to baseball’s select circle.”

A right-handed batter, Cabrera was 5-foot-10 and lean, with a complexion “the hue of burnt leather,” the New Britain Herald reported. (The Post-Dispatch described his skin as being “the color of a coconut shell.”)

Of the four from Cuba to join New Britain, three eventually reached the majors. Almeida and Marsans debuted with the Reds in July 1911. Almeida played three seasons (1911-13) with Cincinnati. Marsans spent sevens seasons in the big leagues with the Reds (1911-14), Browns (1916-17) and Yankees (1917-18). He also had a stint with the St. Louis Terriers of the Federal League (1914-15).

Cabrera played five seasons (1908-12) with New Britain _ (the franchise shifted to Waterbury in June 1912) _ before getting to the majors. His path to St. Louis, however, required a detour through Indianapolis.

St. Louis shuffle

Bob Connery played for and managed Hartford of the Connecticut State League from 1908-12 and was quite familiar with the talents of Alfredo Cabrera. Connery became a Cardinals scout after the 1912 season. He was a friend of Cardinals manager Miller Huggins and both were friends of Mike Kelley, who had become manager of Indianapolis in the American Association.

On Connery’s recommendation to Kelley, Indianapolis acquired Cabrera from the Connecticut State League in January 1913. (Two years later, Connery convinced the Cardinals to sign Rogers Hornsby.)

During 1913 spring training, Cardinals shortstop Arnold Hauser injured a knee. Needing shortstop help, Huggins turned to his friend Mike Kelley. Indianapolis sent two shortstops _ Cabrera and Charley O’Leary _ to the Cardinals.

Unlike Cabrera, O’Leary, 37, had big-league experience. He was the shortstop for the Tigers in two World Series (1907 and 1908). In his last big-league game, he helped turn a triple play before being dispatched by the Tigers to Indianapolis in April 1912.

O’Leary (starter) and Cabrera (reserve) opened the 1913 season with the Cardinals. According to the Indianapolis Star, the Cardinals were impressed by “the dandy throwing arm the Cuban exhibited.”

Huggins told the Post-Dispatch, “I like that fellow’s looks and I intend to give him a thorough trial.”

However, once the season started, Huggins stuck with O’Leary at shortstop and kept Cabrera on the bench. The Cardinals began looking to trade the rookie.

“Cabrera is a shortstop of rare promise and he is the entity which may be used as a pawn to strengthen the club in other departments,” W.J. O’Connor reported in the Post-Dispatch. “Either Brooklyn or Boston could use Cabrera, and Huggins will carry Alfredo until he makes the first swing around the (league) … Huggins is so well-fortified at short, now that O’Leary has proved himself still a major-league performer, that he can readily pass up a promising youngster like Cabrera … If either (Brooklyn) or (Boston) wants Cabrera, Huggins will pass him over for a first-string pitcher or an outfielder.”

One and done

After O’Leary pulled up lame rounding first in a game at Brooklyn on May 15, 1913, the Post-Dispatch reported Cabrera would make his big-league debut the next day as the starting shortstop at Ebbets Field.

Huggins put Cabrera seventh in the batting order, between Rebel Oakes and Ivey Wingo. Pitching for the Cardinals was left-hander Slim Sallee, who would win 19 that season for a club that totaled 51.

The Brooklyn lineup included leadoff batter and center fielder Casey Stengel, and cleanup hitter and left fielder Zack Wheat, who remains the Dodgers’ career leader in total bases (4,003), hits (2,804), doubles (464) and triples (171). The Brooklyn pitcher, Cliff Curtis, never achieved a winning record in five big-league seasons and was a 24-game loser with Boston in 1910.

In the first inning, the Cardinals scored three times against Curtis and had a runner on third, two outs, when Cabrera came to the plate. He grounded out to the pitcher, ending the inning. Cabrera batted again in the third, grounded to short and was out by 20 feet at first, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported.

Cabrera didn’t get a fielding chance, but Huggins apparently was miffed that the shortstop didn’t get to a grounder that went for a hit, the New York Herald reported. In the fifth, Cabrera was removed for a pinch-hitter and Lee Magee shifted from left field to shortstop. Brooklyn won, 6-5. Boxscore

The Cardinals started a utility player, Possum Whitted, at shortstop in their next game. Cabrera was sent to the Springfield (Massachusetts) Ponies of the Eastern Association. “He did not make a very satisfactory showing (with St. Louis) in the eyes of manager Huggins,” the Springfield Daily Republican noted.

International game

Cabrera spent three more seasons (1913-15) in the minors but his playing days lasted much longer in Cuba. As player-manager, he led Almendares to a Cuban League championship in 1915.

According to the Greater Hartford Twilight Baseball League, “Cabrera’s latter years were spent as groundskeeper of Havana’s El Gran Stadium.”

Today, baseball is part of the Canary Islands sports culture. Eric Gonzalez-Diaz, born in the Canary Islands town of San Juan de la Rambla, was a pitcher in the Padres farm system from 2008-10 and played for Spain in the 2013 World Baseball Classic. A Canary Islands team, the Tenerife Marlins, became 2025 Baseball European Cup champions.

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How Alvin Dark saw the light with Ozzie Smith

Posted in Games, Hitters, Managers, Prospects on December 22, 2025| 18 Comments »

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.”

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How Lenny Wilkens got an assist in choosing right path

Posted in Games, Hitters, Prospects on December 1, 2025| 13 Comments »

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.”

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Scout’s honor: How Whitey Herzog became talent evaluator

Posted in Executives, Hitters, Managers on November 24, 2025| 14 Comments »

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.”

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