The Cardinals Way (39 page)

And Luhnow said of DeWitt, unprompted, in August 2015: “I have a tremendous amount of respect for Bill DeWitt, and I think he's a class act. He would never condone, or be involved in anything like this. I think he's a great man, and he's done great things for this organization.”

Still, Luhnow did not underestimate the challenge facing his former club: “They've got some big decisions to make—who's going to be scouting director, is there any more fallout from this. I don't know [what will happen], but I do believe Bill is very concerned about the Cardinals doing the right thing at all times. So I do have high confidence that he's going to do the right thing.”

So it is left to DeWitt and Mozeliak to continue building the way they always have. Each of them expressed the belief that this hacking will not, ultimately, impact their legacies, or the long-term view of the ballclub. Whatever the ultimate changes that come from the FBI investigation, any action Major League Baseball takes, and any further alterations to the Cardinals made by Mozeliak and DeWitt themselves, the continuity at the very top of the organization remains in place.

“I would say just from a very high level that this organization is built for the future” Mozeliak said in January 2015. “And obviously pulling me out of the equation here, I would say that from a baseball standpoint, I feel really confident about the leadership we have in place for many years to come. And when I think about having that sustained success, the one thing that you think about with the St. Louis Cardinals over the last twenty years is one owner, two general managers, and two managers.”

That one owner, Bill DeWitt, now enters his twentieth year in charge of the Cardinals. He's at the top of his profession in every measurable way. The Cardinals are the model organization for the rest of baseball, something the scandal hasn't changed. (Though don't sleep on the Astros, especially if they win in October, as the new paradigm. That's just how baseball works.) He led the search committee to find the new commissioner, and the person they chose, Rob Manfred, quickly replaced seven of the eight members of the powerful owners' Executive Council.

The member remaining? Bill DeWitt.

A full accounting of the Cardinals' success since he arrived reinforces that there's ultimately a single constant. The Cardinals, since 1996, won with the twentieth-century model, under Walt Jocketty, and the twenty-first-century model, under John Mozeliak. They won with an older, experienced field manager in Tony La Russa, and a young manager in Mike Matheny. They won under collective bargaining agreements that emphasized free agency, and those that emphasized player development and leveled the financial playing field. They won in the old Busch Stadium and they won the new Busch Stadium. They won before and during a hacking scandal that put the organization in an unfamiliar, notorious light, and the smart money says they'll keep on winning after the investigations and headlines from it all have faded.

Bill DeWitt has been the constant.

DeWitt turned seventy-four in August 2015. His son, Bill DeWitt III, has been learning under him just as DeWitt Jr. once learned the baseball business from DeWitt Sr., the Branch Rickey protégé.

DeWitt Sr., near the end of his life, joined Bill Veeck as an investor in Veeck's purchase of the Chicago White Sox. Longtime St. Louis baseball writer Bob Broeg said of the return of DeWitt Sr., then seventy-four, to the game: “In recent times, DeWitt has served as a member of the baseball Hall of Fame's Committee on Veterans. But, like Veeck, he has been like a kid outside the candy store with his nose pressed against the window. Not now, though.”
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Just as his father stayed in baseball through the end of his life, DeWitt Jr. can't conceive of doing anything else. Reflecting on his tenure in September 2014, he said:

“I can't say what I really expected twenty years would look like, but I feel good about how it's all occurred and where we are. I will say this: I did feel back in 1996, when we bought the team, that we could build an organization that had every opportunity to be successful. You have to have a lot of good fortune to go along with it. That's for sure. But I felt confident that, given our fan base and given the Cardinals franchise and brand, it was incumbent upon us to build on it, enhance it, and maintain it as best we could. And we have made every effort to do that.”

When it comes to succession, both DeWitts look at the future in the same way.

“I would think he would,” DeWitt Jr. said of DeWitt III succeeding him someday. “I think he views himself at this point as an all-in baseball guy for his career. You never know when things could change, but that's clearly his view today.” Mozeliak, with his office right next to DeWitt III's, has noticed this as well:

“Big Bill is still very active. But I will say my relationship with Billy continues to grow. And I make sure that I share with him on how we think about decisions because obviously his energy is more on the business side. But in a way, it's like a minitutorial for him from time to time. I have talked to Big Bill about this and I certainly understand the long-term planning.”

I asked Mozeliak if the succession plan is similar to what he's tried to build in every department throughout the organization.

“I would say that's comparable. I mean, obviously he's been working for this club for some time now, and his exposure to all the different areas is acutely high. From a day-to-day baseball standpoint, I mostly speak with his father. But that's not to say we don't grab lunch or stop by one another's office from time to time and chat. I mean, we're only separated by a wall, so we do see each other.”

That future comes with expectations unlike those for virtually any other baseball team, thanks to all the consistent success. It also comes, with the disruption of the hacking scandal, with some of the biggest challenges DeWitt has faced since he altered the underlying structure of the Cardinals back in 2003. It comes back to precisely what DeWitt was betting when, back in 2003, he hired Luhnow to, as his memo put it, “take advantage of the inefficient market.” And as Mozeliak pointed out, the success on the field cannot flag while they weather it all.

“The St. Louis Cardinals can't blow something up,” Mozeliak said. “Our expectations here, I mean, I would get run up a flagpole. Bill would get sent down the Mississippi. It's just not practical. This is more of a cultural level of expectation. I've always said that the one thing about working in St. Louis is they demand winning.

“And that's the one thing that—like, my peers always make fun of me. They're, like, ‘Ah, it's an easy job here in St. Louis.' But it's really not.”

So now, even as the St. Louis Cardinals battle a changed, more intelligent competitive atmosphere that they helped create, they have a hundred years of success to live up to as well. DeWitt knows it's up to his team to find the next innovation, the next logical extension of Branch Rickey's work, to make sure that the next George Kissell is managing in the minor league system, that the next Stan Musial, Albert Pujols, or Oscar Taveras is progressing through that system, that the money is there to sign that next great Cardinals hero long-term, after drafting him or trading for him.

A new TV deal with Fox Sports Midwest, reported by Derrick Goold in July 2015
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to have a value of more than $1 billion over the next 15 years, should help with the latter, and DeWitt acknowledged to Goold that spending would go up accordingly, a frightening thought for the rest of baseball, who struggled to keep up with the Cardinals when funded by a below-market TV deal.

As long as the Cardinals keep progressing, every team trying to chase and catch them—and there are many smart organizations—aren't just keeping even. Twenty-nine other teams have hundred years of foundation to build before they can surpass what Branch Rickey passed on through Bill DeWitt Sr. and George Kissell to Bill DeWitt Jr., Jeff Luhnow, and John Mozeliak in St. Louis.

“We're going to continue to make every effort to keep the Cardinals a top-tier franchise in every way,” DeWitt said, “whether it's the best facilities for a minor league player, or a state-of-the-art ballpark in St. Louis. Clearly, on the field is where it all ends up mattering. We will keep striving to do the best possible job. That's the goal. Whether we can maintain the level of success we have had remains to be seen. We stress over every ball game but always look three to five years out as well. The first thing I do every morning is check the minor league game reports from the day before, to find out how our prospects are performing and developing.”

DeWitt leaned back in his chair as we sat and talked in a New York restaurant in September 2014. As Mozeliak said to me, “It's good to be Bill DeWitt.” A play-off-filled October beckoned, the fourth in a row. So, too, was the difficult calendar year to come, filled with the Taveras tragedy, the hacking scandal, but all set against the backdrop of one of the finest runs any baseball team has ever enjoyed. In retrospect, it's not surprising that a visionary like Bill DeWitt, who saw 2015 as a graduate student in 1965, issued a note of caution at that moment.

He's also the best reason to bet on the St. Louis Cardinals in the years to come. “Well, I always say enjoy the moment because baseball can be cyclical, and we all know what can happen if you get injuries to key players, or prospects who are coming up are not as good as you thought. I do think our decision-making process, which continually evolves, has been good, and it has enabled us to have success. But it doesn't necessarily mean that success will continue, and that's the beauty of baseball.”

 

Acknowledgments

A book such as this one cannot happen without the help of so many people along the way. I felt a great responsibility to tell this story properly, and that only increased as I had the privilege of seeing this organization up close across the country, from the very beginning of the player-development system right through to Busch Stadium.

The extent to which the Cardinals opened their organization to me was remarkable at the time, and even now as I reflect upon it. This came from a desire to allow me to fully tell the story of how the Cardinals remade themselves, but from ownership on down, the Cardinals didn't shy away from any question or any period. If anything, their reluctance came during discussions about the team's greatest advances.

This starts with Bill DeWitt, who was so generous with his time, his memories, and his careful documentation of a life spent within baseball. That he could spend so many hours in interviews with me in person, on the phone, and via e-mail while simultaneously running a major league ball club and leading the search for a new commissioner of baseball simply amazed me. It was a pleasure to get to know him as I worked on this book.

The same is true of the executives for the Cardinals during this time. Dan Kantrovitz found answers to the most obscure questions I had, ranging from his initial impressions of long-before-drafted players to his experience in high school with Jon Hamm. John Mozeliak didn't shy away from any premise I presented to him and applied the macro thinking he uses as general manager to larger themes within the book.

I'm also thankful to all those with the Cardinals who not only let me observe them working, but would stop and answer questions I had, including Gary LaRocque, Matt Slater, Tim Leveque, Mark DeJohn, Oliver Marmol, Steve Turco, Ramon “Smoky” Ortiz, Ace Adams, Tony Ferreira, Chris Correa, John Mabry, Derek Lilliquist. and Mike Matheny.

This book also owes a great deal to the help and memories of Jeff Luhnow, Sig Mejdal, and Charlie Gonzalez, all of whom work for the Astros now, all of whom are fascinating in dramatically different ways.

Thank you also to Walt Jocketty, Terry Collins, Tony La Russa, Willie McGee, Whitey Herzog, and many others who shed light on the Cardinals in ways large and small.

A huge thank-you to the players who helped me tell this story: Corey Baker, Chris Rivera, Sam Tuivailala, Rowan Wick, Nick Thompson, and Daniel Poncedeleon. Thank you to many other players who shared details or their personal stories with me as well, on or off the record.

I'm hugely grateful to all those who talked to me about George Kissell, particularly Tommy Kidwell, George's grandson, who simply opened his home to me and allowed me an incredible opportunity: unlimited time with George Kissell's papers, which had been sealed since George's death back in 2008. Huge thanks to Joe McEwing, Mike Shannon, Todd Steverson, Robin Ventura, and many others throughout baseball who provided story after story about the impact George had on them.

A special thank-you to Red Schoendienst, who somehow remembers every single moment from his seventy-three years in professional baseball and took me through as many of them as I asked. If this book project had merely given me the chance to get to know Red, it would have been more than satisfying.

For insight through both their previous work and conversations during the writing of this book, thank you to Derrick Goold, Evan Drellich, and Bernie Miklasz, excellent baseball scribes.

Thank you to Hilary and Jason Schwartz, my in-laws, for their enthusiastic caretaking of my children during so much of this book process. The book in your hands couldn't have happened without you.

Thank you to the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra radio broadcasts, with hosts Adam Crane and Robert Peterson, and David Robertson's great orchestra, for providing the sound track to so many writing sessions, including the final one for this manuscript.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press: Rob Kirkpatrick, for believing in the project; Emma Stein, for sheperding the project to completion against the clock; Peter Wolverton, for making certain an unexpected man tied to the tracks didn't derail our progress; and Joe Rinaldi, for helping me tell the world about this remarkable story.

To my parents, Myrna and Ira Megdal, I am grateful for giving me the unwavering belief in myself and my judgment and to pursue what matters most to me in life. I am thrilled to have this model to pass on to my children, and that you are both here to show them the way toward that life as well.