Thursday, August 7, 2008

Whitey Confuses the Young

Here's a nice story about Whitey Herzog -- one of my all-time favorites -- throwing out the first pitch at a ballpark he helped get built in Belleville, Illinois and which, nicely enough, is named Whitey Herzog Field. That's not the most interesting part of the story, though. This is:

Herzog retains close ties to the Kansas City area from his days as the Royals manager before coming to St. Louis. He was in Independence, Mo., recently when he came across what he described as the almost unheard of sight of two young boys playing catch.

On their own.

"It's the first time I've seen two kids playing catch in 20 years, so I stopped the car and gave them each an autographed ball," said Herzog, who told the surprised boys who he was and why he was stopping to admire their game of catch. "I said, 'I'm so proud that you two kids are out there playing catch, because nobody does anything today unless it's organized. I kind of shocked them a little bit, but I was just in awe of that because you don't see it any more."
The boys were shocked because they thought Whitey was an insane person when he explained who he was. I mean really, who under 30 is going to believe a guy telling them that he (a) made the Kansas City Royals into perennial contenders; and (b) won a World Series with a team that stole 200 bases and only hit 67 home runs?

1 comment:

Ron Rollins said...

Nice post about Whitey. He's still our hero.

But you could have left out that last little bit. Don't we have enough pain to deal with on a daily basis?