St. Louis Globe-Democrat

Whitey Herzog always seemed to know earlier than anybody else what was going to happen in a baseball game. He has now proved to be a pretty good psychic about Hall of Fame elections as well.

Two years ago, the former Cardinals’ manager looked at the list of people on the Veterans Committee and correctly predicted he was going to miss being elected by one vote.

When Herzog looked at the names of the 16 men serving on the committee this year, knowing he needed 12 yes votes for election, he thought he had a pretty good chance of receiving that one extra vote.

Actually, Herzog was wrong – he was named on 14 of the 16 ballots, and found out in an early-morning telephone call Monday that he had been elected to the baseball Hall of Fame.

Former umpire Doug Harvey, a longtime Herzog nemesis, received 15 votes from the committee and will join Herzog at the induction ceremonies in Cooperstown, N.Y. on July 25.

“It took a little while,” Herzog said at a news conference at Busch Stadium. “I don’t think I would have had my heart broken if I had missed by another vote or two, but I’m darned happy it’s over. I’m the happiest guy in St. Louis today.”

Herzog, who managed the Cardinals for 10 seasons before retiring in 1990, first learned he was under consideration for the Hall of Fame in 1997 and has been a candidate since, even though the procedures for electing managers has changed over the years.

There were several years when Herzog thought he would never be elected, until he kept seeing other managers he had competed against being admitted to the Hall.

“I thought maybe I had a chance,” said Herzog, who said he had never thought about the Hall of Fame when he had been a player, manager, general manager or executive in the game.

“The 10 years I spent in St. Louis were the happiest years of my life in baseball,” Herzog said. “I haven’t lost a game in 19 years, although I haven’t won any either, and every time I go to the grocery store or the gas station or the bank, somebody recognizes me and thanks me for giving them 10 years of exciting baseball. They said that before I became a Hall of Famer.”

Herzog was one of eight former managers under consideration by the committee, a panel made of Hall of Fame players, former managers, executives and the media. Longtime Cardinal shortstop Ozzie Smith was selected last week as a substitute for an absent committee member, which Herzog knew would only help his chances of election.

In a phone call to Herzog after the results of the vote were announced, Smith told his former manager, “You had the votes before I got here.”

“It was very clear once the committee got into the room and started talking that everybody knew how deserving he was,” Smith said in Indianapolis, where the vote was announced during baseball’s winter meetings.

Herzog said he really was not nervous about the vote. After going out to dinner Sunday night, he came home and fell asleep in a chair watching the Sunday night football game. He woke up at 1:15 a.m., went to bed and was up at 5 a.m., the time his wife Mary Lou had set on the alarm.

Herzog said she was worried about having time to pack for the trip to Indianapolis, where they were to attend a dinner Monday night, and where he will hold another news conference on Tuesday.

“What happens if the phone doesn’t ring?” he asked his wife.

The phone did ring, however, and once the news got out, Herzog said it had not stopped since. He said he had 35 missed calls on one phone in less than two hours and 17 missed calls on another phone.

“I’m glad we have to leave so we don’t have to answer the phone all day,” Herzog joked.

Herzog was not joking about how appreciative he was for the support of the Cardinals’ fans, and he also took time during his news conference to thank the current Cardinals’ ownership and all of the people who had played a role in helping him along the way during his career.

He singled out Casey Stengel, who took him under his wing when he was the manager of the Yankees; Bing Devine, who put him in charge of the Mets’ farm system, Joe Burke, who gave him a second chance to manage in the majors with the Royals after he ha been fired by Texas, and the late Gussie Busch, who hired him as manager of the Cardinals in 1980.

Herzog admitted he had a special relationship with Busch, and said one of the reasons he retired as manager of the Cardinals only months after Busch’s death was because he knew he would never have that kind of a relationship with an owner again.

“He was so good to me,” Herzog said.

Herzog and Harvey could be joined in the Hall of Fame Class of 2010 by former players elected to the Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers Association of America. That vote will be announced on Jan. 6.

Herzog said that it was kind of ironic he will be enshrined alongside Harvey, who kicked him out of more games than any other umpire during his career.

“My good friend,” Herzog called Harvey. “We never really argued about balls or strikes, safe or out, fair or foul. We were always arguing about the weather.”

Herzog said he would frequently get a weather report that it was about to rain, but Harvey refused to put the tarp on the field until it was too late and the field had become unplayable. He recalled one game in New York where Herzog wanted the game stopped because of the weather, and Harvey told him he was only arguing because the Cardinals were losing.

“He was a good umpire, but he was the worst damn weatherman I’ve ever seen,” Herzog said.

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