Hall of Fame manager who led Cardinals to 3 pennants dies

NEW YORK » Whitey Herzog, the gruff and ingenious Hall of Fame manager who guided the St. Louis Cardinals to three pennants and a World Series title in the 1980s and perfected an intricate, nail-biting strategy known aS “Whiteyball,” has died. He was 92.

Cardinals spokesman Brian Bartow said Tuesday the team had been informed of his death by Herzog’s family. The team did not immediately have additional details about Herzog, who had been at Busch Stadium on April 4 for the Cardinals’ home opener.

“Whitey Herzog devoted his lifetime to the game he loved, excelling as a leader on and off the field,” Jane Forbes Clark, chair of the Hall of Fame’s board of directors, said in a statement. “Whitey always brought the best out of every player he managed with a forthright style that won him respect throughout the game.”

A crew-cut, pot-bellied tobacco chewer who had no patience for the “buddybuddy” school of management, Herzog joined the Cardinals in 1980 and helped end the team’s decade-plus pennant drought by adapting it to the artificial surface and distant fences of Busch Memorial Stadium.

“They (the media) seemed to think there was something wrong with the way we played baseball, with speed and defense and linedrive hitters,” Herzog wrote in his memoir “White Rat: A Life in Baseball,” published in 1987. “They called it ‘Whiteyball’ and said it couldn’t last.”

Under Herzog, the Cards won pennants in 1982, 1985 and 1987, and the World Series in 1982, when they edged the Milwaukee Brewers in seven games.