4.8 • 673 Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2024
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Whether it was the style of play still expected of the team, the restoration of championship expectations, or the devoted fans that filled the ballpark and informed and inspired generations to come, the 1980s teams of Whitey Herzog were a force multiplier for Cardinals history. They amplified the reach and the devotion of the fans. And Herzog was the exponent, doing more than just double, triple, or even tenfold the fans of the Cardinals for his decade as manager. This podcast built on remembrance and storytelling becomes a tribute. Herzog, a Hall of Fame manager, died this past week in St. Louis. He was 92. His legacy is large, his influence still ubiquitous at the ballpark. And who better to ask about Herzog's lasting impact on the organization and its fan base than a St. Louis native born in 1980 and born as a baseball fan during the era of Ozzie Smith, Willie McGee, and Herzog? So here is the question presented to St. Louis Post-Dispatch sports columnist Benjamin Hochman: What was it like being born as a baseball fan into Whiteyball? Cue the synthesizer. Hochman talks with Best Podcast in Baseball host and baseball writer Derrick Goold about the teams captured his imagination as young fan and put thousands on the edge of their seats from the moment the leadoff hitter stepped it. Those teams and their gregaroius manager galvanized a city and there are friendships that Hochman still has from his youth that were at least strengthened by a shared love for the Whiteyball-era Cardinals. They played an innovative and charismatic brand of baseball. The modern team could benefit from both. This brand-new BPIB closes with a discussion what to make of the Cardinals offense as they finish their first division series of the season. With former MVP and an engine of production for the team, Paul Goldschmidt, struggling, the Cardinals have needed some innovation to spark the offense. Where can that come from, and do the traits of Whiteyball offer any hints at how to maximize a roster and conjure a contender even while the top producers are struggling? The season is young, but the offensive struggles of the team already feel old. Hall of Fame broadcaster Jack Buck gets the last words with wisdom that applies to 1987 or 2024. The Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and Derrick Goold.
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0:00.0 | The best podcast in baseball is brought to you by Closets by Design. |
0:05.6 | Update your closet, garage, office, pantry, and more. |
0:09.0 | Imagine your home totally organized with closets by design. |
0:12.6 | Call 1-800 by design. |
0:14.4 | That's 1-800-by-design. |
0:17.1 | The Cardinals are expected to do really well every year at St. Louis, |
0:20.5 | and Whitey might have helped set that precedent, but that's now the precedent. |
0:24.3 | I think he was a force multiplier. |
0:26.1 | Whitey Hurtsa was a force multiplier in the sense that he took a fan base and didn't double or triple it. |
0:32.4 | He added an exponent. |
0:34.5 | Yeah. |
0:35.1 | You know, he was the exponent on Cardinal history. |
0:45.4 | Hello, everybody, and welcome to the best podcast in baseball, brought to you by Clause's |
0:48.4 | by Design. |
0:49.0 | I'm St. Louis Post Dispatch baseball writer Derek Gould, joined this week by someone I thought would be best to answer the following |
0:58.3 | question. The question is, what was it like being born into Whiteyball? As a St. Louisian, |
1:06.4 | Benjamin Hockman, sports columnist at the Post Dispatch, what was it like being born into Whiteyball? |
1:13.0 | Was it, was it, you had to be a baseball fan? |
1:15.7 | Did that forever, is that forever the lens you look through for, for what baseball means? |
1:22.0 | What was it like to be born into Whitey Ball? |
1:24.5 | Well, I mean, I think the phrase is blessed as we were so spoiled to be born. |
1:32.7 | I was born in 1980, but to be born, you know, in that era and raised on this special brand of |
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