Whitey Herzog, the Hall of Fame manager who led the St. Louis Cardinals to three pennants and a World Series championship in the 1980s, died on Monday in St. Louis. He was 92 and had been the second-oldest Hall of Famer after Willie Mays.
His death was announced by the Cardinals.
“Baseball has been good to me since I quit trying to play it,” Herzog liked to say.
Signed by the Yankees in 1949, he never made it out of their minor league system, though he picked up a lifetime of baseball knowledge from Manager Casey Stengel at spring training camps. He played the outfield for four American League teams over eight seasons with only modest success.
But Herzog found his niche as a manager with what came to be called Whiteyball, molding teams with speed, defense and pitching to take advantage of ballparks with fast artificial turf and spacious outfields, first at Royals Stadium in Kansas City and then at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.
Herzog managed the Kansas City Royals to three consecutive American League division championships in the 1970s, then took the Cardinals to the 1982 World Series title with a team he had built while general manager as well. And he managed the Cardinals to pennants in 1985 and 1987.
He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 2009.
“The fundamental aspects of the game were some of the things he always highlighted,” the Cardinals’ Hall of Fame shortstop Ozzie Smith once said. “It simply came down to the way he prepared us to play the game.”
