'Dawson's a man's man'

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. - Whitey Herzog has fond memories of Chicago.

Well, leaving it, anyway.

"I hated playing at Wrigley Field," Herzog said with a laugh Saturday. "The grass in the infield was so long you'd have trouble finding Easter eggs in it.

"And the wind, when it was blowing out, made our lives miserable. (Andre) Dawson could hit more home runs in a week than our (St. Louis) team hit in a month.

"We were much better when the wind was blowing in."

Herzog, selected for induction by a Hall of Fame Veterans Committee on managers and umpires, has equally unhappy memories of facing Dawson and Ryne Sandberg.

"They killed us. Heck, we made Sandberg famous for God's sake," Herzog said of the "Sandberg Game" against Bruce Sutter and the Cardinals on June 23, 1984, when Herzog called him, "Baby Ruth." "Dawson's a man's man. Five-tool player who could beat you in five different ways.

"He was one of the few guys pitchers were really intimidated by. I've seen a lot of great hitters, but he intimidated you up there. No way to throw a pitch past him. He made you give in to his pitch. That's what made him a Hall of Famer."

Herzog is proud, however, of all the damage the Cardinals did in the NL East in the '80s, winning four division titles, three NL pennants and the World Series in 1982.

"When I came to St. Louis they were 11th or 12th in home runs every year in a 12-team league, and the ballpark was tremendously big," Herzog said. "Plus, there were six AstroTurf parks and two more parks in California (L.A. and San Diego) whose infields were so fast it was like turf.

"So I changed the whole concept of the way we tried to play baseball because we couldn't hit a home run. One thing we could do was neutralize the power of the other team in our ballpark.

"So I went with speed, which is the one thing in baseball you can use on both sides of the ball. ... And every year we'd start out trying to break Roger Maris' record as a team and some years we did.

"I think most of the years we beat it like when we won the World Series, we hit 67 home runs, and the team we beat - Milwaukee - hit about 220.

"But we could play pretty well because fundamentally we played sound defensively and we could really cut off the balls in the gaps."

As for losing to the Twins in the 1987 World Series, White Sox fans will understand how Herzog feels about the old Metrodome.

"We won all three at our place and they won all four in theirs, and I think we could have played (in Minnesota) until Christmas and not won a game," Herzog said, before channeling Mike Ditka. "That was a good place to roller skate. Terrible for baseball. You couldn't see and you couldn't hear.

"It was the greatest home advantage I've ever seen any team have. I can't believe they gave that up."

For those who love the old school, Herzog is disgusted by what steroids did to the game and agrees with those who'd like to see managers do away with late-game specialists.

"It's really easy to win baseball games with speed and defense, but these days with the stadiums so small, you have to have three or four power guys or you get killed," Herzog said. "You couldn't play only 'Whitey Ball' today.

"The game goes in cycles, but the thing that hasn't come back like it did 20 years ago is running. There's not much movement and running because a lot of managers don't want to get people thrown out on bases and want to wait for the homer.

"And don't get me started on the quality start, or the sixth-inning pitcher, seventh-inning pitcher, eighth-inning pitcher.

"I don't see how that's made the game better or pitchers better. You can't tell me it has."