As he approaches 90, Herzog laments the state of baseball and its fundamental issues
Whitey Herzog will become the second-oldest living Hall of Famer to turn 90 on Tuesday. Giants great Willie Mays turned 90 in May.
Appearing as an observer, instructor and savant at the Cardinals’ Fantasy Camp at Jupiter, Florida, this week, Herzog, laughing, said, “I’ve never been 90 before. Everybody says, ‘You don’t look 90. You look good.’ My answer to that is, ‘I don’t feel as good as I look.’”
Later on, the man who shepherded the Cardinals to the 1982 World Series title and two other National League pennants said he actually felt good except for some circulatory trouble in his right leg. His brain as sharp as ever, he lacked for no opinions in nearly an hour telephone conversation with the Post-Dispatch on Friday night.
First, he lamented how hard it was to find good pitchers among the campers. “It’s terrible,” Herzog said. “But I always say when you come down here you realize how damn hard it is to play ball.” Then, Herzog launched into a sharp discussion about how damn hard it is these days for him to watch ball. “The state of the game in baseball is about as bad as I’ve ever seen it,” Herzog began. “It’s all strikeouts and home runs and a high number of pitches.” And too many four-hour games, he said, especially during the postseason. “And then, the commissioner (Rob Manfred), who’s never worn a jockstrap, has all these rules … and the way every manager is using his bullpen now … out of 54 outs every night, you’ve got about 22 strikeouts between the two teams and 10 walks. So you’ve got 32 guys every night that don’t hit the baseball,” said Herzog. “(Manfred) keeps talking about the three-batter rule for pitchers. Stupid. And then the 10th inning rule (with a runner at second base). Stupid. Seven-inning doubleheaders. Stupid. “None of that is going to shorten the games at all, until we can lower the amount of pitches that they throw. I watch every game at home. I generally don’t go to bed until 11 at night when I’m watching the West Coast games and when the teams throw 340 to 360 pitches every night, there’s no way you can shorten the games. “I sit and watch an 0-2 pitch — a perfect pitch on the black — (the umpires) never ring anybody up. It’s always a ball. “And now the count is two strikes and a ball but the power pitchers can’t throw a ball three inches off the outside of the plate where a hitter might get himself out. They can’t pitch three inches off the inside corner. They’re two feet or a foot-and-a-half out of the strike zone. Now, its 3-2. Then the batter fouls off a pitch and fouls off another one and the announcer says, ‘We’ve got a quality at-bat’ when the hitter should have been on the bench after three pitches if they ring him up and call the pitch on the ‘black.’ “It’s not a very good game or product to watch anymore. It’s something that’s really serious. I don’t understand how we got like this. “In the old days — and I’m not trying to talk like an old-timer — a nine-inning game was 265 pitches on the average for two teams. That game lasted 2 hours and 30 minutes. In games that I managed, 285 to 300 pitches were a three-hour game. Most of those games were high-scoring games like 9-8 or 7-6. Now, they’re 1-1, like that Cardinals playoff game against the Dodgers, and they’re going four hours. “What would you do?” Before waiting to hear an answer, Herzog said, “If they call more strikes, there will be more swinging and there probably will be less strikeouts if the hitters know they have to swing at some of those pitches that have been called balls.” The skipper then turned his attention to the the basics. “There’s no fundamentals” he said. “There’s no manufacturing of runs. Very few people go from first to third on a ground ball hit to right field past the first baseman. The Cardinals did it as well as anybody in the league.”
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