The Heir Presumptive

A nice profile of Cardinals' coach Jose Oquendo, who as I mentioned recently was one of my favorites from back in the day. Good quote in response to a question about the extent to which Whitey Herzog, Joe Torre, and Tony La Russa have impacted his style:

"Each of them had their own way of handling players and handling situations in the game," Oquendo says. "But it's not fair for me to draw so much from Whitey because I was a player then. As a player you view the game a lot differently than when you're a coach. I played for Joe Torre also. He was different than Whitey and Tony. But Torre came to us in a different situation. He didn't have the players that Whitey had early in the 80s. He had the players that were the reason Whitey quit."

Personally, I'm hoping he has more Whitey than Tony in him. I'm also hoping that the Cardinals keep him around long enough to where he can move in to the manager's office once Tony finally moves out.