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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 »

Classic combo: Jim Kaat, Lee Smith, Bruce Sutter

November 12, 2025 by retrosimba

A run-of-the-mill second game of a Saturday afternoon doubleheader at Wrigley Field turned into a showcase featuring a trio of future Hall of Fame pitchers.

Jim Kaat and Lee Smith were the starters in the Cardinals versus Cubs game on June 26, 1982, at Chicago. Kaat got the win and Smith took the loss in a 2-1 St. Louis triumph. The save went to Bruce Sutter. All three pitchers would be elected to baseball’s shrine in Cooperstown, N.Y.

For Sutter, earning a save was standard _ a five-time National League saves leader with the Cubs (1979-80) and Cardinals (1981-82 and 1984) _ but starts were uncommon then for Kaat and always were rare for Smith.

A prominent starter during his prime with the Twins and White Sox, Kaat was converted to a relief role in 1979. The start against the Cubs was just his second in two years.

Smith pitched in 1,022 games in the majors but made only six starts.

The longshot odds of Kaat and Smith opposing one another as starters made their matchup extra-special.

Making adjustments

Kaat, 43, was the primary left-handed reliever in a 1982 Cardinals bullpen that had Sutter as the closer and Doug Bair as the right-handed setup man. After Kaat struggled early _ his ERA for the season was 6.75 on May 1 _ pitching coach Hub Kittle worked with him to use a sidearm motion. “When he drops down, his ball moves more,” Kittle told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “I think he throws harder down low, too.”

The altered delivery helped Kaat. He didn’t allow a run in 12 of 15 relief appearances from May 2 to June 20.

Meanwhile, Smith, 24, was part of a 1982 Cubs bullpen with veterans Willie Hernandez, Bill Campbell and Dick Tidrow. Hernandez and Campbell got most of the save opportunities early in the season, but Cubs pitching coach Bill Connors told the Chicago Tribune, “Smitty can be a bullpen star. If you need a strikeout, he’s the guy who’s going to get it for you. Some people say he’s not consistent with his fastball, that he tires easily and loses his stuff. They’re wrong.”

When Cubs starters Dickie Noles (knee) and Randy Martz (shoulder) went on the disabled list in June, manager Lee Elia moved Smith into the rotation. Before then, his only big-league start came in the 1981 season finale against the Phillies.

Smith started twice for the 1982 Cubs before facing the Cardinals.

Fine-tuned engine

With the Cubs’ top run producer (Bill Buckner) and best home run hitter (Leon Durham) batting left-handed, Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog chose a pair of left-handers, Dave LaPoint and Kaat, to start the June 26 doubleheader.

In Game 1, LaPoint (eight innings) and Sutter (one) confounded the Cubs, and St. Louis won, 4-1. Boxscore

As Kaat recalled to podcaster Jon Paul Morosi, “I’m sitting in the clubhouse and (broadcaster) Harry Caray’s on the air and he’s saying, ‘Well, the Cardinals got the best of us, but we’ve got a chance in Game 2, because we’ve got hard-throwing Lee Smith and the Cardinals got 43-year-old, soft-tossing Jim Kaat.’ ”

(Kaat had been around so long that his manager, Whitey Herzog, batted against him 20 years earlier when Herzog was with the 1962 Orioles. Kaat struck Herzog on the right elbow with a pitch and Herzog had to leave the game.)

The Cubs scored a run in the first, but Kaat found a groove and held them scoreless over the next five innings. Described by the Tribune as “a genuine geriatric marvel,” Kaat relied on “guile, breaking stuff and an occasional sneaky fast one,” the newspaper noted.

“In relief pitching, you have a tendency to come in and gun like you’re gunning the engine of a car,” Kaat said to the Post-Dispatch. “Starting pitching is entirely different. I don’t try to throw as hard. I try to stay within myself.”

Unlike Kaat, Smith was a hotrod. Displaying a 95 mph fastball, he gave up a run in the second on consecutive doubles by Ken Oberkfell and Gene Tenace. The winning run came in the third when, with two outs, Lonnie Smith singled, stole second and scored on a Keith Hernandez single.

Herzog said he planned to let Kaat pitch five innings, but he sent him out in the sixth because Buckner and Durham were due to bat. Kaat retired the side in order, then was lifted for a pinch-hitter in the seventh.

On being taken out after throwing 82 pitches, Kaat told the Post-Dispatch, “Emotion always tells you that you could have gone longer, but common sense tells you that you’ve got to bring pitchers in when you’ve got our bullpen.”

The Cubs loaded the bases in the seventh against Bair, and again in the eighth versus Bair and Sutter, but couldn’t score either time. (The Cubs stranded 11 runners in the game.) Sutter got his second save of the day with a scoreless ninth. The win for Kaat was his 280th in the majors.

Kaat, Sutter and Smith were three of eight future Hall of Famers in uniform during that game. The others: Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith, Cubs second baseman Ryne Sandberg, Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog, Cardinals coach Red Schoendienst and Cubs coach Billy Williams. Boxscore

What a relief

Smith was 0-4 with a 4.94 ERA as a starter for the 1982 Cubs. In July, they moved him back to the bullpen and he excelled as the closer (seven saves, 1.32 ERA in August; seven saves, 0.57 ERA in September.) He never started another game in the majors.

Kaat returned to the Cardinals bullpen. In July, he allowed just one run in 14 appearances. The Cardinals gave him one more start, his 625th and last in the big leagues, on Sept. 18 against the Mets. Boxscore

Sutter (nine wins, 36 saves, 70 games pitched) and Kaat (five wins, two saves, 62 appearances) helped the 1982 Cardinals become division champions. Then they won the National League pennant and World Series title.

Kaat pitched his final season, his 25th in the big leagues, with the 1983 Cardinals before being released in July.

After stints with the Cubs and Red Sox, Smith was acquired by the Cardinals in May 1990. In four seasons (1990-93) with St. Louis, Smith earned 160 saves. Only Jason Isringhausen has more saves (217) as a Cardinal. In 1991, Smith had 47 saves for St. Louis. The only Cardinals with a higher single-season total are Ryan Helsley (49 in 2024) and Trevor Rosenthal (48 in 2015).

Posted in Games, Opponents, Pitchers | 14 Comments »

1982 Cardinals played Jim Kaat style of baseball

November 7, 2025 by retrosimba

In 2025, Jim Kaat was interviewed by Jon Paul Morosi for the Baseball Hall of Fame podcast “The Road to Cooperstown.”

Here are excerpts:

Being enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame:

Kaat: “I’m probably the only pitcher inducted based on longevity, dependability, accountability (rather than) dominance … There are a lot of guys who are there because they’re thoroughbreds, but there’s room for a Clydesdale as well.”

The secret to pitching 25 years (1959-83) in the big leagues:

Kaat: “I didn’t play Little League baseball. I didn’t really pitch organized baseball until I was about 15 _ American Legion ball in Michigan. Before that, we just had neighborhood kids, you’d get eight, 10 kids together, and go out and play … My sports were fast-pitch softball and bowling. Little did I know that those two exercises are great for the pitching arm … because your arm is going underhanded. I didn’t abuse my arm. Lucas Giolito (2019 all-star) threw 90 mph when he was 14 years old. He’s probably suffered through some injuries because of that. I probably threw 90 in my early 20s. There wasn’t an emphasis on velocity. It was movement and control.”

On youth baseball today:

Kaat: “It’s become so competitive. There is so much pressure on these young kids that I think a lot of times, by the time they’re 16, they’re probably burned out. A lot of it is the coaches and the parents … When I see the parents nowadays, they’re hanging on the fence, screaming at their kids, ‘Get the ball over.’ They’re paying big money to send these kids to these schools. They’ve taken the fun out of it. I never had to go through that. I think that’s a big reason I was able to pitch for a long time.”

On his father, John Kaat:

Kaat: “I have a picture on my desk of my dad standing in front of the Hall of Fame in 1947. He went to see Lefty Grove’s induction. That was his favorite player. He was an avid fan.”

On what he might have done if he didn’t become a big-league pitcher:

Kaat: “I’d have loved to have been a small-town high school basketball coach. You’d have a lot of influence on kids.”

On Twins teammate and fellow Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew:

Kaat: “Harmon kind of set the tone for the behavior of the Twins … If you look at his penmanship, it’s the most immaculate, perfect, and he taught all the Twins players … He insisted, ‘Don’t you want to write your name so people know who you are?’ (Today) the Twins’ top-paid player, Carlos Correa, (signs) C.C. You don’t even know who it is.”

On Twins teammate and fellow Hall of Famer Rod Carew:

Kaat: “He took batting practice with us the end of 1966 and he was hitting some home runs. Then I think he found out that we didn’t care about exit velocity or launch angle … He was a magician with the bat. He changed his stance pitch to pitch. He moved all over the place. He got about some 30 bunt hits a year.”

On Twins teammate and fellow Hall of Famer Tony Oliva:

Kaat: “American League catchers in those days … would say the one guy we feared coming up in a clutch situation was Tony O. because Tony was that blend of power, average and speed.”

On Sandy Koufax, the Dodgers starter who opposed Kaat in Games 2, 5 and 7 of the 1965 World Series (Koufax won two of the three):

Kaat: “Happy to say he became a friend. He’s one of the (congratulatory) calls I got when I (was elected to) the Hall of Fame. We’ve stayed in touch. We’ve had some dinners together through (ex-Cardinal) Bill White, who was my broadcast mentor. He and Sandy live close to one another in the summer in Pennsylvania. I cross paths with Sandy a fair amount.”

On White Sox teammate and fellow Hall of Famer Dick Allen, who came up to the majors with the Phillies:

Kaat: “Had he been brought up in the Cardinals organization, where they had more black players, (Lou) Brock and (Curt) Flood, (Bob) Gibson, Bill White … it would have been easier for him … Dick suffered a lot in Philadelphia … It was tough for him as a black star in Philadelphia.”

On pitching for the Phillies (1976-79):

Kaat: “The end of my time in Philadelphia in 1979, I wasn’t pitching much. Danny Ozark was not a manager that had much confidence in guys who didn’t throw hard. I used to tell him, ‘Danny, Walter Johnson’s not around anymore.’ ”

On pitching in 62 games for the 1982 Cardinals at age 43 and being a part of a World Series championship team:

Kaat: “That was the most exciting team … The most enjoyable year I ever had … We hit 67 home runs as a team, stole 200 bases, had Bruce Sutter at the end of the games … To see that team play every day and the havoc it created for the opposition … Willie McGee would get on first. Boom! He’s on third … That was such a rush for me, waiting that long and to be a part of a team that … was totally foreign to the way the game is played today … Baseball came from the words base to base, and that’s what we did … That was the kind of baseball I was raised on.”

On what he told rookie pitcher John Stuper, who, with the Cardinals on the brink of elimination, pitched a four-hitter to beat Don Sutton and the Brewers in World Series Game 6:

Kaat: “I was kind of like a mentor to Stuper. I sat with him on the plane (after Game 5). I said, ‘Stupe, nobody expects you to win tomorrow. We’re facing Don Sutton. He’s going to the Hall of Fame. (Pretend) it’s a 10 o’clock in the morning exhibition game. Have some fun out there. Don’t worry about it.’ ”

On Cardinals teammate Keith Hernandez:

Kaat: “I don’t think there was ever a player I played with that was more intense on every play of the game … He kind of personified our team in that every play, every day, there was an intensity that’s hard to have over 162 games.”

On what he’s most proud of in his broadcasting career:

Kaat: “I learned from Tim McCarver to be honest and objective … Not being a homer.”

Posted in Broadcasters, Games, Pitchers | 13 Comments »

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