RetroSimba

Why the Cardinals fired Warren Spahn

February 2, 2011 by retrosimba

Less than a year after offering him their big-league pitching coach job, the Cardinals fired Hall of Fame left-hander Warren Spahn as manager of their Class AAA team.

The Tulsa Oilers were 15 games below .500 and in last place when Spahn was fired. The Cardinals said Spahn’s dismissal was based on a desire to give other managers in their system a chance to advance.

On Aug. 27, 1971, Cardinals general manager Bing Devine arrived unannounced in Tulsa, met with Spahn and told him his contract would be terminated after the completion of the American Association season.

Spahn responded he wouldn’t manage the remaining seven games. Tulsa outfielder Gary Geiger, a former big-leaguer, filled in for Spahn.

“I certainly respect Bing for flying to Tulsa to tell me,” Spahn said to The Sporting News. “He could have as easily picked up a phone and told me.”

Spahn, 50, said Devine informed him there were no other jobs for him with the Cardinals and “there were young prospective managers in the organization who needed to move up.”

Jack Krol, 35, who managed Class AA Arkansas in 1971, replaced Spahn at Tulsa for the 1972 season.

According to The Sporting News, Spahn had been offered the job of pitching coach on Cardinals manager Red Schoendienst’s staff in October 1970 after Billy Muffett was fired. Spahn chose to remain Tulsa manager.

Clyde King, a former Cardinals minor-league manager and pitching instructor, also was considered to replace Muffett, but King became manager of the Class AAA Richmond Braves, and the Cardinals settled for former reliever Barney Schultz as their pitching coach.

A day after Spahn’s firing, Aug. 28, 1971, Tulsa general manager Hugh Finnerty quit in protest, saying he hadn’t been consulted.

“I haven’t felt like I was general manager,” Finnerty said. “I felt like the releasing of Spahn was ill-timed, coming just seven days before the end of the season.”

Oilers owner A. Ray Smith told The Sporting News the Cardinals had contacted him two weeks before Spahn’s firing to advise him of their decision.

“The Cardinals pay 100 percent of the manager’s salary and I think that gives them the right to do what they want _ although they have never tried to cram anything down our throats,” Smith said.

Spahn had been Tulsa’s manager for five seasons _ the longest stint in franchise history. When he became Tulsa manager in 1967, it was at the urging of Smith and at great cost to the Cardinals.

According to The Sporting News, the Cardinals’ first choice to manage the 1967 Tulsa team was Sparky Anderson, who managed the Cardinals’ Class A St. Petersburg club to a Florida State League championship in 1966. Smith wanted Spahn, who never had managed. The Cardinals relented and assigned Anderson to manage their Class A Modesto team in 1967.

Upset he had been passed over for the Class AAA job, Anderson left the Cardinals’ organization after the 1967 season and accepted a minor-league managing job in the Reds’ system. In October 1969, Anderson was selected manager of the Reds and embarked on his Hall of Fame career.

After the Cardinals fired him, Spahn became pitching coach of the 1972 Cleveland Indians. Gaylord Perry earned 24 wins and received the Cy Young Award with Spahn as his coach that season, and the Indians had a 2.92 team ERA.

Posted in Managers | 3 Comments »

The story behind Stan Musial’s $100,000

January 31, 2011 by retrosimba

(Updated Nov. 30, 2024)

When Stan Musial established a National League record by signing a one-year, $100,000 contract, he got his first pay raise from the Cardinals in seven years.

On Jan. 29, 1958, Musial, 37, became the first National League player with a six-figure salary when the Cardinals agreed to pay him $100,000 to play first base.

After Musial won his seventh batting title by hitting .351 in 1957, Cardinals general manager Bing Devine asked him what salary he wanted for 1958.

In the book “Stan Musial: The Man’s Own Story,” Musial said he told Devine, “I’d like to be the highest-salaried player the National League has had. ”

Devine and Musial agreed on $91,000. Team owner Gussie Busch generously instructed Devine to give Musial $100,000.

According to Bob Broeg in the Feb. 5, 1958, edition of The Sporting News and verified by James Giglio in the book “Musial: From Stash to Stan the Man,” it was Musial’s first pay raise since Fred Saigh, then the Cardinals’ owner, signed Musial for $75,000, with a $5,000 attendance clause, on Feb. 18, 1951.

In the next seven seasons, Musial won three batting titles (1951, 1952 and 1957) and a RBI crown (1956), and hit .310 or better with at least 21 home runs each year. None of that earned him a raise until Busch surprised Musial with the $100,000 offer for 1958.

(In 1952, Saigh invited reporters and photographers to a meeting he had with Musial. In a stunt that stunned and embarrassed Musial, Saigh handed him a contract with a blank amount and urged him to fill in any figure. The classy Musial said he would accept the same salary he received in 1951).

“Baseball has rewarded me richly,” Musial said after signing the $100,000 deal. “The Cardinals always have treated me more than fair, this year in particular. Mr. Busch and Bing wanted me to have this contract. I would have settled for less … I feel highly honored.”

Mary Murphy, secretary to every Cardinals owner since 1930, attended the signing. According to Broeg, Musial said to Murphy, “Did you ever think, Miss Murphy, that when I signed for $4,200 in 1942 I’d ever be in this position?”

Murphy later told Broeg, “He (Musial) hasn’t changed a bit. He’s the same boy he’s always been.”

In a Page 1 article in the Feb. 12, 1958, edition of The Sporting News, Dan Daniel reported the highest-paid big leaguers that year were Red Sox outfielder Ted Williams ($125,000 per year), Musial ($100,000), Giants outfielder Willie Mays ($75,000) and Braves pitcher Warren Spahn ($65,000). According to Daniel, Yankees outfielder Mickey Mantle was asking for $75,000 to play in 1958.

“What has been going on in this major league contract-signing season is utterly without precedent in the game,” Daniel wrote. “All over the nation there has been runaway inflation which has sent the cost of living higher and higher, to continual new records. Now this inflation has hit baseball with a frenzy which defies efforts at analysis from any angle.”

Musial responded by batting .337 and collecting his 3,000th hit in 1958.

When he hit .255 (first time below .300 in his career) in 1959, Musial asked for and received a $20,000 pay cut, to $80,000, for the 1960 season, according to The Sporting News.

“The Cardinals have been generous to me the past few years, so I thought I’d be kind to them,” Musial said.

Even with the pay cut, The Sporting News reported, the 1960 contract made Musial the first National League player to reach $1 million in career salary ($1,053,000 in 18 seasons).

In the 1982 book “Voices From Cooperstown, asked his opinion of players receiving multiyear contracts, Musial said to author Anthony J. Connor, “I believe that the American system always worked on the basis of people being paid after they’ve produced.”

Posted in Hitters | 2 Comments »

Warren Spahn and his Cardinals connection

January 29, 2011 by retrosimba

(Updated April 13, 2025)

Hall of Fame left-hander Warren Spahn never pitched for the Cardinals, but his final games as a pitcher were with the St. Louis organization.

Spahn, who had 363 big-league wins, primarily with the Braves, got his first try at being a manager in 1967 with the Cardinals’ Class AAA Tulsa Oilers.

The Oilers were a team of former big-league veterans (pitcher Tracy Stallard, outfielder Joe Christopher) and a few prospects (pitchers Mike Torrez and Wayne Granger).

By August, Spahn’s pitching staff was weakened by injuries. So, at 46, he placed himself on the active roster and into the starting rotation.

Spahn had made his last big-league appearance in 1965, with the Giants. He pitched in three games with the Mexico City Tigers in 1966.

Former Braves catcher, Joe Torre told Cardinals Yearbook in 2014, “Spahn was easy to catch, a walk in the park, because his control was impeccable.”

On Aug. 7, 1967, a Monday night in Tulsa before a crowd of 4,238, Spahn started against the Hawaii Islanders and their 30-year-old right-hander, Bill Haywood. Catching for Tulsa was Pat Corrales.

Tulsa scored four times in the first. When Spahn held Hawaii scoreless through the first three innings, it appeared the old master was headed for a successful comeback. Then it fell apart. Hawaii scored a run in the fourth and four in the fifth, taking a 5-4 lead. After Spahn departed with one out in the fifth, the game unraveled in the hands of the bullpens. Tulsa won, 14-13.

Spahn’s line: 4.1 innings, 4 hits, 4 runs (3 earned), 4 walks and 4 strikeouts.

Five nights later, Aug, 12, Spahn started again, at Oklahoma City against the 89ers before a gathering of 1,028. When he left after two innings, Oklahoma City led, 3-0, and went on to win, 3-2, handing Spahn the loss in the last start of his professional career.

Spahn’s line: 2 innings, 3 hits, 2 runs, 1 walk, 1 strikeout.

Spahn also made a relief appearance, consisting of two-thirds of an inning, for Tulsa. In his three games for the Oilers, Spahn was 0-1 with a 6.43 ERA.

Spahn remained as Tulsa manager until 1971, but he never pitched again.

Posted in Games, Managers, Pitchers | 7 Comments »

George Crowe was Cardinals mentor to Curt Flood

January 22, 2011 by retrosimba

George Crowe was a pinch-hitter and reserve first baseman for the Cardinals from 1959-61. He played a more valuable role to the team as a mentor to Curt Flood.

Acquired by the Cardinals from the Reds in an October 1958 trade, Crowe was 37, a veteran who had played in the Negro National League and who broke into the majors in 1952 with the Boston Braves.

Flood, 21, was in his second full season in the majors in 1959 and still trying to establish himself as an everyday center fielder. His fielding was superb, but his hitting was inconsistent. Cardinals manager Solly Hemus was giving time to veteran Gino Cimoli in center field.

In his book, “The Way It Is,” Flood said, “During 1959 … I was playing in fewer games and having trouble hitting above .250. I now became more worried about my swing, and more receptive to help.

“The coaches were willing to coach, but were not good enough theoreticians or communicators to do me much good. As usually happens when a player needs assistance of that kind, I finally got it from another player _ George Crowe, who knew batting theory and was more articulate about it than anyone else on the Cardinals … George straightened me out. He taught me to shorten my stride and my swing, to eliminate the hitch, to keep my head still and my stroke level. He not only told me what to do, but why to do it and how to do it. He worked with me by the hour.”

In his book, “Stranger To The Game,” pitcher Bob Gibson said, “Flood … benefited from the soft wisdom of George Crowe, who was an independent, unconventional thinker and a father figure to both of us when we came up.

“Although Crowe never played regularly with the Cardinals, he was an established home run hitter and he knew one when he saw one. He also knew that Flood, at 165 pounds, wasn’t one … So Crowe talked Curt out of being another Willie Mays and gently persuaded him to guide the ball to right field in pursuit of .300.”

A left-handed batter, Crowe hit .301 with eight home runs in 77 games for the 1959 Cardinals. Four of those homers were as a pinch-hitter. He had 21 RBI with his first 24 hits for St. Louis.

Crowe’s eighth-inning solo homer off Art Fowler snapped a 5-5 tie and lifted St. Louis to a 6-5 victory over the Dodgers on April 25, 1959. Fowler retired 11 in a row before Crowe’s blast deep into the pavilion in right-center. Boxscore

Two weeks later, on May 7, Crowe ripped a three-run, pinch-hit homer over the pavilion roof against the Cubs’ Moe Drabowsky in a 4-3 Cardinals victory. Stan Musial won it for St. Louis with his 400th career homer. Boxscore

And on Aug, 13, 1959, Crowe belted a pinch-hit grand slam against the Dodgers’ Roger Craig. Boxscore

“Crowe has fulfilled all of our expectations,” Cardinals general manager Bing Devine told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch during the 1959 season. “… He’s intelligent, likes to win and accepts his part-time assignment well.”

Crowe slumped to .236 in 73 games in 1960. When his big-league career ended, after playing in seven games for the 1961 Cardinals, Crowe held the major league record for career pinch-hit homers (14).

In October 1961, the Cardinals signed him to scout for them.

Posted in Games, Hitters | 2 Comments »

Cardinals vs. Reds: An Easter night to remember

January 19, 2011 by retrosimba

(Updated April 3, 2020)

On April 3, 1994, the Cardinals and Reds opened the major-league season with a controversial Easter night game at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium.

Because of the weather (39 degrees at first pitch, with steadily falling temperatures after a day of rain and snow flurries), the game probably shouldn’t have been played, but ESPN was televising a season opener for the first time and had heavily promoted it, so every effort was made to proceed as planned.

Reds owner Marge Schott and many Reds fans were opposed to their team opening the season on a Sunday night.

The Reds traditionally opened their season with a weekday afternoon game, starting with a parade in the morning. Cincinnatians adored the tradition and treated the day like a holiday.

To many Reds fans, the Sunday night opener was unacceptable and some expressed dissatisfaction by boycotting. The announced attendance was 32,803 in a stadium that seated almost 55,000. It was the smallest Opening Day crowd in Riverfront Stadium’s 24-year history and the first time the Reds hadn’t sold out a season opener in 10 years.

Schott and the Reds had agreed to the game when first approached, but Schott tried to renege when she learned the city wouldn’t host a parade before a night game.

“ESPN and Major League Baseball will have their Opening Day tonight,” Schott told the Associated Press. “The Reds’ opener is Monday.”

Schott, back in charge of the club after serving an eight-month suspension for racially offensive conduct, ordered no bunting adorn the stadium for the night game. There were no player introductions. A Cincinnati radio station urged fans to display banners criticizing ESPN.

Jon Miller, who broadcast the game for ESPN with former Reds second baseman Joe Morgan, said, “I don’t understand how they would downplay the Sunday game. It’s a marketing person’s dream: the Sunday opener and the traditional opener (Monday). What more could you want?”

Schott urged fans and her team to treat the opener like an exhibition. She spoke about the importance of the parade that would be held Monday morning. “We’ll have 20 more floats than we’ve ever had before,” she said. “The Air Force is coming in. Oh, and we’re going to have 300 pigeons, so keep your hat on.”

The Cardinals’ Ray Lankford, the first batter of the 1994 season, lined a 3-and-2 pitch from Jose Rijo over the left-center field fence for a home run. Video

It was the first time in eight years a leadoff batter opened the season with a homer. (Dwight Evans did it for Boston against Detroit’s Jack Morris in 1986). It also was the first time a Cardinal hit a homer in the first inning of the first game since Darrell Porter launched a three-run shot off Houston’s Nolan Ryan in 1982.

“I was just anxious to get going,” Lankford said. “When I was in here stretching, I started thinking about being the first batter of ’94. I wanted to do something. I couldn’t have asked for anything better than that to open the season.”

With the score 3-3 in the fourth, Cardinals pitcher Bob Tewksbury, a notoriously poor hitter, swung at a first-pitch fastball and lined a two-run, two-out double to center off Rijo, putting St. Louis ahead to stay, 5-3.

“I wasn’t going to give him a chance to throw a slider,” Tewksbury told The Cincinnati Post. “I was going to swing early and often. If I take that first pitch, I’ll never see a fastball.”

The unsung hero for the Cardinals was reliever Vicente Palacios. In the seventh, with St. Louis ahead 6-4, the Reds loaded the bases with two outs and Reggie Sanders at the plate. Sanders had homered in his previous at-bat, and there was a strong sense this was the moment for the Reds to strike. Palacios struck out Sanders and the Cardinals went on to win. Boxscore

“It didn’t seem like opening night at all,” Tewksbury said. “Part of that I think is because it was a night game and part of that was that Marge treated it like she didn’t want it to be the opening game.”

Said Reds catcher Joe Oliver: “It was the first game this year and it just seemed like a middle of the season game. It was sort of disappointing. We got hyped and went out there and the place was half full.”

Cincinnati Post columnist Paul Daugherty wrote, “Riverfront Stadium had all the ambiance of a garage sale. At Schott’s behest, the Reds accorded the game all the pomp of a rain delay … By the time the Reds batted in the bottom of the ninth, it was close to 11 p.m. and there weren’t more than 10,000 fans still in the stadium. Maybe they were frozen to their seats.”

Posted in Games, Opponents | 1 Comment »

Cardinals dealt Trevor Hoffman first defeat

January 13, 2011 by retrosimba

(Updated July 29, 2018)

Trevor Hoffman’s first loss in the big leagues was to the Cardinals.

Hoffman, who retired Jan. 12, 2011, with 601 saves and was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2018, had his share of success against the Cardinals (six wins, 25 saves), but he had some spectacular setbacks, too.

Against teams whom he faced at least 10 times in his career, Hoffman’s ERA was highest vs. St. Louis (4.09 in 51 regular-season games).

Though he lost to the Cardinals three times in the regular season, none of those defeats occurred during his time with the Padres, whom he pitched for in 16 of his 18 big-league seasons.

Two of his losses to St. Louis came while with the Brewers (2009-10).

The other occurred in 1993 when he broke into the majors with the expansion Marlins.

On May 16, 1993, at St. Louis, Hoffman was brought in by manager Rene Lachemann to face the Cardinals in the bottom of the ninth of a scoreless game. With one out, Gregg Jefferies singled to center, stole second base and advanced to third on catcher Steve Decker’s errant throw. Hoffman issued intentional walks to Ray Lankford and Mark Whiten, loading the bases.

With Stan Royer, hitless in the game, due up next, manager Joe Torre called on Todd Zeile to bat. Zeile’s single to center scored Jefferies, giving St. Louis a 1-0 victory and handing Hoffman his first career loss. Boxscore

It would be 16 years before Hoffman lost to the Cardinals again in the regular season. On Sept. 8, 2009, at Milwaukee, Matt Holliday’s two-run, ninth-inning home run against Hoffman carried St. Louis to a 4-3 victory. Boxscore

The next year, on April 9 at Milwaukee, pinch-hitter Nick Stavinoha’s two-run home run against Hoffman in the ninth lifted the Cardinals to a 5-4 victory. Boxscore

Two other Cardinals home runs against Hoffman are noteworthy:

_ In Game 3 of the 1996 National League Division Series at San Diego, Hoffman entered in the ninth with the score at 5-5. Brian Jordan’s two-run home run gave St. Louis a 7-5 victory and a sweep of the best-of-five series. Boxscore

_ A year later, June 10, 1997, at San Diego, a matchup of two top relievers, Hoffman and Dennis Eckersley, became a debacle for both.

With the Padres leading 3-1 in the ninth, Hoffman entered and yielded four runs _ the last two on Delino DeShields’ two-out, two-run home run _ to put St. Louis ahead, 5-3.

Eckersley attempted a save, but Tony Gwynn’s two-out, two-run double tied the score at 5-5. San Diego won, 6-5, with a run in the 12th. Boxscore

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