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You're Missin' a Great Game: From Casey to Ozzie, the Magic of Baseball and How to Get It Back
A baseball coaching legend offers his views on the games's current condition and making positive suggestions for improvements
320 pages, Hardcover
First published March 18, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 6, 2017
You're Missin' a Great Game is a combination of reminiscing about the old days, explaining how Whitey managed, and criticizing what he sees in today's game and the troubles looming ahead. It's similar to Leo Durocher's ghost written memoir where the writer catches the voice of the manager and it therefore reads like a conversation.
It had been so long since I read anything about Herzog that I had forgotten that he was a Casey Stengel acolyte having come up with the Yankess in the 1950s. I knew this once from Leonard Koppet's classic The Man In the Dugout: Baseball's Top Managers and How They Got That Way. Herzog thought the world of Stengel and demonstrates examples of how brilliant the guy was. He dismisses the notion that anyone could have won with that lineup in the 1950s by describing how the Yankees were never favored in any of the years they won 5 straight titles, but Casey always found a way to win.
The book is not just hagiography of guys like Stengel though. On the contrary, he is tough with most everyone, even the people he likes. He'll tell you that Jack Clark was a great fast ball hitter who spent too much time looking for the curve. He traded Ted Simmons because the league was running all over him. Vince Coleman hated being a OBP guy and wanted to hit home runs and he needed constant attention to not fall into bad habits. Same with Willie Wilson. Jaquin Andujar needed reassurance and positive reinforcement on every mound visit or hook. Garry Templeton rested too much on his natural ability. Baseball managers like Chuck Dressen and Paul Richards overthought the game and used up their benches in the middle innings. And the comments go on.
Whitey is very compassionate about baseball owners Gussie Busch and Gene Autry though. They are described as two great bosses and baseball men. He says he would have loved to manage for George Steinbrenner because The Boss likes to win. But Herzog could not stand Royals owner, Ewing Kaufman, a guy blew opportunities and didn't understand the game. Whitey turned down an offer to work for Charley Finley for similar reasons.
The book was written in 1999 so Whitey laments the “juiced ball” that causes too many home runs. He can tell by the way it bounces against the ground when he throws it. He scoffs at rumors of Jose Canseco using steroids and the subject doesn't come up again. He blames the ball. He agrees that the 1998 home run race was exciting but in the long run bad for baseball. He does this by explaining how many people hit 30 home runs that season and how the result of that will be to inflate baseball salaries of those players and then the average and mediocre players will follow until the game cannot sustain the economics of it. Also contributing to this is the salary arbitration concession the owners made in the 1970s that has had unintended consequences like utility players making $4 million a year (in 1999 dollars). He blames both the owners and union rep Donald Fehr for this escalation. Fehr for his greed and the owners for their lack of vision when it came to future of baseball. Arch culprit Marvin Miller gets kind words for some reason to due to Whitey's pension.
Part of the lack of vision is how the owners put teams in Tampa and Arizona to avoid a lawsuit on their anti-trust exemption and that created an odd number of teams in each league. That created the necessity of inter-league play which creates some issues that have since been worked out but also a travel nightmare for players. The extra division and the round of playoffs creates more revenue but that money just goes back into the inflated salaries while negating the distinction of a ball club rewarded for playing great ball for 162 games.
In the last 20 or so years baseball has addressed some of his pet peeves but not all. Whitey lost the World Series in 1985 because of a call that would have been overturned on replay today. He lost the 1987 series because the 5th best team in the American league (Minnesota Twins) used their home field advantage of playing in a horrible baseball park. They did it again in 1991 against a superior Braves team. The unbalanced schedule within baseball divisions helps address some of that. Playing in baseball only stadiums addresses the other.
But Whitey still hates Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, and Coors because he says it gives an unfair advantage to the home team. He proposes a neutral site every year for all 7 World Series games with no travel. He suggests a purpose-built park in a non MLB city like Nashville. It would have a retractable roof to avoid rainouts. And what would he do with the ballpark the other 51 weeks a year? He would make it into a giant bingo parlor. I think he's serious. Fantasy Camps, All Star Games, Olympics, College world series could also play there.
Whitey would change a lot of other things too and I would almost have to re-write the book here to tell you about them. Let's end by saying Whitey the reformer has better insight and ideas than Bob Costas the reformer does in his Fair Ball: A Fan's Case for Baseball book, but Herzog is more long-winded. Some of these topics are out of date by now, but much of it is still worthy of discussion and enjoyment. If you ran a book club full of baseball fans the discussions from this book could be limitless.
It had been so long since I read anything about Herzog that I had forgotten that he was a Casey Stengel acolyte having come up with the Yankess in the 1950s. I knew this once from Leonard Koppet's classic The Man In the Dugout: Baseball's Top Managers and How They Got That Way. Herzog thought the world of Stengel and demonstrates examples of how brilliant the guy was. He dismisses the notion that anyone could have won with that lineup in the 1950s by describing how the Yankees were never favored in any of the years they won 5 straight titles, but Casey always found a way to win.
The book is not just hagiography of guys like Stengel though. On the contrary, he is tough with most everyone, even the people he likes. He'll tell you that Jack Clark was a great fast ball hitter who spent too much time looking for the curve. He traded Ted Simmons because the league was running all over him. Vince Coleman hated being a OBP guy and wanted to hit home runs and he needed constant attention to not fall into bad habits. Same with Willie Wilson. Jaquin Andujar needed reassurance and positive reinforcement on every mound visit or hook. Garry Templeton rested too much on his natural ability. Baseball managers like Chuck Dressen and Paul Richards overthought the game and used up their benches in the middle innings. And the comments go on.
Whitey is very compassionate about baseball owners Gussie Busch and Gene Autry though. They are described as two great bosses and baseball men. He says he would have loved to manage for George Steinbrenner because The Boss likes to win. But Herzog could not stand Royals owner, Ewing Kaufman, a guy blew opportunities and didn't understand the game. Whitey turned down an offer to work for Charley Finley for similar reasons.
The book was written in 1999 so Whitey laments the “juiced ball” that causes too many home runs. He can tell by the way it bounces against the ground when he throws it. He scoffs at rumors of Jose Canseco using steroids and the subject doesn't come up again. He blames the ball. He agrees that the 1998 home run race was exciting but in the long run bad for baseball. He does this by explaining how many people hit 30 home runs that season and how the result of that will be to inflate baseball salaries of those players and then the average and mediocre players will follow until the game cannot sustain the economics of it. Also contributing to this is the salary arbitration concession the owners made in the 1970s that has had unintended consequences like utility players making $4 million a year (in 1999 dollars). He blames both the owners and union rep Donald Fehr for this escalation. Fehr for his greed and the owners for their lack of vision when it came to future of baseball. Arch culprit Marvin Miller gets kind words for some reason to due to Whitey's pension.
Part of the lack of vision is how the owners put teams in Tampa and Arizona to avoid a lawsuit on their anti-trust exemption and that created an odd number of teams in each league. That created the necessity of inter-league play which creates some issues that have since been worked out but also a travel nightmare for players. The extra division and the round of playoffs creates more revenue but that money just goes back into the inflated salaries while negating the distinction of a ball club rewarded for playing great ball for 162 games.
In the last 20 or so years baseball has addressed some of his pet peeves but not all. Whitey lost the World Series in 1985 because of a call that would have been overturned on replay today. He lost the 1987 series because the 5th best team in the American league (Minnesota Twins) used their home field advantage of playing in a horrible baseball park. They did it again in 1991 against a superior Braves team. The unbalanced schedule within baseball divisions helps address some of that. Playing in baseball only stadiums addresses the other.
But Whitey still hates Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, and Coors because he says it gives an unfair advantage to the home team. He proposes a neutral site every year for all 7 World Series games with no travel. He suggests a purpose-built park in a non MLB city like Nashville. It would have a retractable roof to avoid rainouts. And what would he do with the ballpark the other 51 weeks a year? He would make it into a giant bingo parlor. I think he's serious. Fantasy Camps, All Star Games, Olympics, College world series could also play there.
Whitey would change a lot of other things too and I would almost have to re-write the book here to tell you about them. Let's end by saying Whitey the reformer has better insight and ideas than Bob Costas the reformer does in his Fair Ball: A Fan's Case for Baseball book, but Herzog is more long-winded. Some of these topics are out of date by now, but much of it is still worthy of discussion and enjoyment. If you ran a book club full of baseball fans the discussions from this book could be limitless.
Read
February 14, 2011Whitey Herzog was perhaps THE foremost proponent of "small ball" or the classic National League game: baserunning, relief pitching, defense, and manufacturing runs. Tellingly, he wrote this book towards the end of what we now know to be the steroids era of baseball -- when even his beloved Cardinals were infatuated with the long ball to the exclusion of less-photogenic fundamentals -- and hence it's a strongly-worded plea for a baseball aesthetic that seemed in danger of dying out.
But even if you prefer the virtues of badass starting pitching and three-run homers, Herzog's memoir is still worth reading because his baseball career spanned essentially the entire second half of the 20th century. He came up in the Yankee organization with Casey Stengel and Roger Maris, and managed until the MLB strike year of 1994-95. He dealt with such game-changing factors as artificial turf (now almost extirpated from baseball), the explosion of Latin American talent, several rounds of expansion, and drugs. Except in one case -- the unnamed Kansas City Royal who "ended up with problems that cost us a key playoff game and, in my opinion, a chance at the World Series" -- Whitey is ready to name names and tell tales. The ghostwriter here, Jonathan Pitts, did a fantastic job keeping the flavor of Whitey's buzz-cut Midwestern no-bullshit charm, disses and all.
Whitey makes a solid case that he should become the next baseball commissioner, if that post were in fact filled by someone who would act for the good of the game instead of for the good of the cartel. And Herzog should feel a sense of accomplishment that most of the competitive clubs these days would at least pay lip service to a lot of his points. But it's unfortunately true that because his managerial career was almost entirely in small markets and his teams were stylistically so extreme -- and possibly because he never had a great writer on the beat with him -- the White Rat seems destined to become more and more a connoisseur's memory. Perhaps in the end that assessment wouldn't even bother him much, as he seems to very much enjoy the pleasure of being stubbornly "right" in his baseball logic when everyone else is marching in the opposite direction. It's hard to imagine another Whitey Herzog being possible in the increasingly corporate confines of Major League Baseball... but if it happens, it will be largely due to this book I think.
But even if you prefer the virtues of badass starting pitching and three-run homers, Herzog's memoir is still worth reading because his baseball career spanned essentially the entire second half of the 20th century. He came up in the Yankee organization with Casey Stengel and Roger Maris, and managed until the MLB strike year of 1994-95. He dealt with such game-changing factors as artificial turf (now almost extirpated from baseball), the explosion of Latin American talent, several rounds of expansion, and drugs. Except in one case -- the unnamed Kansas City Royal who "ended up with problems that cost us a key playoff game and, in my opinion, a chance at the World Series" -- Whitey is ready to name names and tell tales. The ghostwriter here, Jonathan Pitts, did a fantastic job keeping the flavor of Whitey's buzz-cut Midwestern no-bullshit charm, disses and all.
Whitey makes a solid case that he should become the next baseball commissioner, if that post were in fact filled by someone who would act for the good of the game instead of for the good of the cartel. And Herzog should feel a sense of accomplishment that most of the competitive clubs these days would at least pay lip service to a lot of his points. But it's unfortunately true that because his managerial career was almost entirely in small markets and his teams were stylistically so extreme -- and possibly because he never had a great writer on the beat with him -- the White Rat seems destined to become more and more a connoisseur's memory. Perhaps in the end that assessment wouldn't even bother him much, as he seems to very much enjoy the pleasure of being stubbornly "right" in his baseball logic when everyone else is marching in the opposite direction. It's hard to imagine another Whitey Herzog being possible in the increasingly corporate confines of Major League Baseball... but if it happens, it will be largely due to this book I think.
December 21, 2020
A dated but pleasurable read for an old baseball fan like myself; onewho grew up in the 1980’s watching Whitey Herzog’s Runnin’ Redbirds and have always had great respect for the White Rat.
It’s part-biography but really more a book of discussions about baseball over the years. Herzog is in the Hall of Fame for his managing, but he has been a big league player, a scout, and also an excellent general manager. He’s certainly one of the most brilliant baseball men of my era and I still think he’d run circles around the managers and general managers today, if he were just thirty years younger.
I enjoyed the walk down memory lane, even though this book was written in 1999 and the “modern” issues he speaks of are dated. Actually, his concerns about powerball, slow paced games, and soft starting pitchers in 1999 have been greatly exacerbated by 2020. I can only imagine his dislike for what’s happened lately to MLB! (And I quite honestly feel the same.)
Recommended for like-minded readers!
It’s part-biography but really more a book of discussions about baseball over the years. Herzog is in the Hall of Fame for his managing, but he has been a big league player, a scout, and also an excellent general manager. He’s certainly one of the most brilliant baseball men of my era and I still think he’d run circles around the managers and general managers today, if he were just thirty years younger.
I enjoyed the walk down memory lane, even though this book was written in 1999 and the “modern” issues he speaks of are dated. Actually, his concerns about powerball, slow paced games, and soft starting pitchers in 1999 have been greatly exacerbated by 2020. I can only imagine his dislike for what’s happened lately to MLB! (And I quite honestly feel the same.)
Recommended for like-minded readers!
December 14, 2024
I loved Whitey as. Manager and person, and his stories from the prime time of recent Cardinals baseball, but I felt like a lot of times the book was just an old guy pining for “the good old days.” When I agreed with his ideas, I had the feeling I was just an old guy wishing for the good old days.
May 16, 2015
I enjoyed this book, but if it was possible I would have rated it 3 1/2 stars instead of 4. However, I have a bias because of my love for the game of baseball, so I gave it 4 stars instead of 3.
Written in 1999, the book is written by Whitey Herzog, former player, manager, and GM. He talks about what his career was like, what he learned from Casey Stengel, what it was like managing the Royals in the '70's and the Cardinals in the '80's. He wrote about some of the things that happened in various games, including the bad call at first in the 1985 World Series, injures to key players, decisions about what players to sign or release.
With that said, most of the book was about what he would do to change the game of baseball for what he feels would be in the best interests of the game. Sometimes, it reads like the thoughts of a discontented former player who feels that the past is the best and that anyone who likes the current game is not a real fan. Yet other times, Whitey gives real insight as to how to change game for the better. In addition, having read the book 15+ years after it was written, some of the changes and/or complaints he discusses have occurred. He was unhappy with inter-league play, and did not think it would last. Yet now we have daily inter-league play. He discusses the need to explore other countries for talented players, even before everyone started placing camps in Latin America. In addition, Whitey discusses speeding the game up, relying less and less on the homerun, and striving for parity with the teams so smaller market teams can have a chance at being successful. One thing he does not say, that many people don't say, is that part of the problem of getting kids to like the game is because of how late the games start. During the season, there are some afternoon and early evening games. Yet when it comes to the playoffs, and especially the World Series, they start so late that kids can't see or listen to the games.
Anyway, I did enjoy the book. Whitey brings up some points that make you think, even if you don't agree with him. He also seems a little prescient given the changes that he mentions, and how some of them have occurred. Baseball fans should enjoy this book.
Written in 1999, the book is written by Whitey Herzog, former player, manager, and GM. He talks about what his career was like, what he learned from Casey Stengel, what it was like managing the Royals in the '70's and the Cardinals in the '80's. He wrote about some of the things that happened in various games, including the bad call at first in the 1985 World Series, injures to key players, decisions about what players to sign or release.
With that said, most of the book was about what he would do to change the game of baseball for what he feels would be in the best interests of the game. Sometimes, it reads like the thoughts of a discontented former player who feels that the past is the best and that anyone who likes the current game is not a real fan. Yet other times, Whitey gives real insight as to how to change game for the better. In addition, having read the book 15+ years after it was written, some of the changes and/or complaints he discusses have occurred. He was unhappy with inter-league play, and did not think it would last. Yet now we have daily inter-league play. He discusses the need to explore other countries for talented players, even before everyone started placing camps in Latin America. In addition, Whitey discusses speeding the game up, relying less and less on the homerun, and striving for parity with the teams so smaller market teams can have a chance at being successful. One thing he does not say, that many people don't say, is that part of the problem of getting kids to like the game is because of how late the games start. During the season, there are some afternoon and early evening games. Yet when it comes to the playoffs, and especially the World Series, they start so late that kids can't see or listen to the games.
Anyway, I did enjoy the book. Whitey brings up some points that make you think, even if you don't agree with him. He also seems a little prescient given the changes that he mentions, and how some of them have occurred. Baseball fans should enjoy this book.
May 19, 2012
Great stories from the great Whitey Herzog!
July 20, 2020
Herzog was the last of the small ball managers - he came up in a time when runs were hard to come by, and the teams that he inherited were notably power-deficient. By running a small ball style, he got the most out of his teams and won. It is easy, however, from that vantage point to dismiss the Earl Weaver school, and the steroid rocket-ball style was horrific for him. But his point that small ball is more fun to watch is true. And he does spot several of the fundamental problems with professional baseball and the grip that it is losing on the American public - it is so much better in person than on TV among them.
June 2, 2024
With Whitey's passing (in April), I pulled this off the shelf for the first time in 25 years. It's a fun read, especially considering a quarter century of baseball history has happened since "the White Rat" shared his thoughts on how to improve Major League Baseball. Some of those ideas (replay, the universal DH, a pitch clock) have indeed been implemented. I wish we had a more-recent addendum with his thoughts on the absurd economics/salaries and atrocious rules like an "automatic runner" in extra innings. Whitey Herzog was one of a kind, and, having grown up with the 1980s Cardinals, he'll be my manager for the rest of my days.
April 7, 2024
This was a difficult book to read for a couple of reasons. The book was written in 2000, twenty-four years ago. So several of the player examples he used are not known to me. Then, the author was extremely critical of the game of baseball, its structure, rules and styles of play. I can’t even imagine what he would think about the way baseball is played today. I wish he would have had a more constructive approach. Also there were several instances of minor swearing.
March 28, 2021
Basically a cranky old man airing his grievances. I thoroughly enjoyed it!
April 2, 2022
No better baseball man in the game — ever.
April 13, 2019
Interesting and insightful the book is an easy read. Full of anecdotes. Full of criticism about the game today particularly how it is being played. The "game we are missing" is everything not immediately apparent on the field.
July 21, 2014
If you're a St. Louis Cardinal fan, especially of those 'Whitey Ball' teams, this is a must read. The book covers Whitey's life, but practically his whole life has been wrapped up in baseball. He talks and provides great insight into his time with the Rangers, Royals and the Cardinals, pretty much 'telling it like it is' in his usual, but incredibly insightful, way. Some of the stories he shares are hilarious. This is a fun book to read.
April 27, 2008
Best baseball book ever and a great look into how to run a business.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews