Happy Wednesday,
Post-Dispatch sports columnist Ben Frederickson here. Just a quick note to alert you to a change in the formatting of my weekly newsletter. I'm shifting away from the weekly Tuesday online chats, so re-running the greatest hits from that chat in this newsletter is no longer an option. I still hope to answer any questions readers have for me. I'll do that here in this newsletter in mailbag style as they come in, and will also have more freedom and flexibility to bounce around to other topics and ideas. This week's question will be answered below. Thanks, and please don't be shy about sending in any questions or comments you want to see tackled. Have a great rest of your week!Â
Got a question? Email me here (bfrederickson@post-dispatch.com) or find me on X (formerly known as Twitter) at and hashtag your question with #BF5.
People are also reading…
Rest in peace, Whitey Herzog.
Tears are flowing in Cardinal Nation as a beloved Hall of Famer's remarkable life is celebrated.
Whitey was cherished. Whiteyball was addictive. A great baseball man and mind are gone. His impact and influence will continue to leave fingerprints on the sport. Great, winning baseball can be fun, thrilling baseball.
The White Rat started managing the Cardinals during an in-progress 1980 season and resigned during an in-progress 1990 season. That meant he managed nine wire-to-wire seasons in ºüÀêÊÓƵ. During that time (1981-99) the Cardinals won three National League pennants and one World Series championship. (Many will always believe it should have been two, had a certain call in 1985 gone the right way.) Still, those Cardinals led the NL in regular-season wins, with 751. They led the NL in postseason wins, with their 21 tying the Dodgers during that span.
That’s a lot of winning, thanks to great managing and great buy-in from great players on the Whiteyball style that emphasized speed, defense, pitching strategy and valuing all of those things over power in a park that rarely rewarded it. Perhaps the most bonkers Whiteyball stat is where the Cardinals ranked last. Their 658 home runs from 1981-1989 ranked dead last in baseball – by a difference of 198 home runs. Those Whiteyball Cardinals combined to slug just .362 during that span, another MLB low for the time period. They made up for it with the NL’s highest on-base percentage (.326) during the near-decade and lapped the field in stolen bases (1,928), swiping nearly 500 (488) more than second-place Montreal.
Baseball's steroid era wasn't kind to the Whiteyball way, and the game and its players are still largely obsessed with power, power, power. But it's been fun to observe a recent trend back toward speed, defense and showcasing players' exceptional athleticism. Baseball continues to introduce rule changes and tweak them, trying to get more action, trying to give fans what they say they want more of, like stolen bases. Herzog was ahead of his time in how he managed a bullpen, how he built a team for his ballpark, and how he knew what fans wanted to go to the ballpark to see. It's not just homers.
Baseball, we sometimes forget, is an entertainment business. Herzog never forgot that.
Please find all of the P-D's exceptional coverage of Herzog's passing by hitting this link.Â
Got a question or comment for me? Let me know and I'll answer it here.
This week's spotlight goes to ... lots of folks.
Thanks for all of your emails regarding my column about Caitlin Clark. There was a great discussion going on in my email inbox this week. Lots of Clark fans out there. One reader thought I was in the wrong for calling out Clark's WNBA critics, arguing Clark is just the latest great women's college basketball player to cause a stir in the sport, not a stand-alone star who is bigger than the rest. I'm not so sure about that. The TV ratings for the WNBA Draft earned nearly 2.5 million viewers, which was a 307 percent increase according to Sportico. More people watched Clark go to the Indiana Fever with the first overall pick than tuned in for the most recent NHL and MLB drafts. The WNBA has not had an eyeball-grabber like this in league history. Period.