You're Missin' a Great Game: From Casey to Ozzie, the Magic of Baseball and How to Get It Back Book

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.