An Age-Old Story

I was looking forward to the All-Star break. A little golf, some rest and relaxation, and then back to what I was certain was going to be another close, exciting race in the National League East.

It was 1983, and I was a member of the St. Louis Cardinals, my fifth major league team. We had won the World Series the year before. We had finished three games ahead of the Philadelphia Phillies in the National League East, our division, beat Joe Torre's Atlanta Braves three straight in the National League Championship Series, then won the World Series from the Milwaukee Brewers in seven games by taking the last two games in St. Louis.

I had had a decent year. Pitching almost exclusively in relief, I was 5–3 with two saves.

Now I was in my fourth season with the Cardinals, longer than I had been with any team since the Twins. I hadn't pitched much in the first half — just 34 2/3 innings in 24 games, no record, no saves, but a 3.89 earned run average. And I was feeling pretty good about the second half, for the team and for myself.

We had gotten off to a slow start, but by the break, we were in the thick of the NL East race and we had some good veteran players — George Hendrick, Tommy Herr, Ozzie Smith, Willie McGee, Darrell Porter, an excellent pitching staff with Bob Forsch, Joaquin Andujar, John Stuper, Dave LaPoint, and, in my opinion, the best closer in the game, Bruce Sutter — pretty much the same cast that had won the World Series. And we had Whitey Herzog, a manager with a knack for getting the most out of the talent he had.

I had been sold by the Yankees to the Cardinals early in the 1980 season. When I arrived, Ken Boyer was the Cardinals manager, but after I was there a little more than a month, Boyer was fired and Herzog was brought in.

I had played against Whitey when he managed, very successfully I might add, in Texas and Kansas City. Herzog was the most brilliant and the brightest manager I ever played for. The way he used me, and the way he ran a game, he was the best.

He was the manager in St. Louis for about two months when he was made general manager, so he left the field and went up to the front office and Red Schoendienst, the great Cardinals' Hall of Fame second baseman, took over for the remainder of the season. It was just an interim position for Schoendienst, who had managed the Cardinals for 12 years and had won two pennants and one World Series with those great Cardinals teams in the late sixties.

When the 1980 season ended, the organization announced that Herzog would serve as both field manager and general manager, so I would deal with Whitey when it came time to negotiate a new contract. I didn't have an agent. I always did all my own negotiations. With Whitey, it was a simple process. I'd go to Herzog at the end of the season and ask him, "What do you think? Do you think I can still pitch? You want me back?"

"Yeah," he'd say. "I think you can still do it."

Then we'd talk money. He'd say, "What were you making last year, $135,000? What do you think you ought to have?"

"Oh, I don't know, $175,000."

"OK, you got it."

That was it. Real simple. It took just a few minutes.

Herzog was getting tired of all the paperwork he had to do as general manager, so in 1982 he brought in Joe McDonald to take on some of the responsibilities as general manager. Whitey still made most of the personnel decisions, but McDonald was the guy who did the paperwork and negotiated contracts.

It was getting toward the end of the 1982 season. We hadn't won the division yet, but we were on our way to winning it, so I went to Whitey like I always did and said, "What about next year?"

"Yeah, I told Joe I want you back next year."

I went upstairs to see McDonald. "I just want to talk about next year," I said. "Whitey said he wants me back and he told me to come up and get a contract settled."

But McDonald started hemming and hawing. "Well, Andy Hassler is out there," he said. "And some other left-handers. I'm thinking about inviting you to spring training as a nonroster player." And I'm thinking, "What's going on here?"

I went down to see Whitey. "McDonald's giving me a different story," I said.

Time passed and we won the division and the National League pennant, and we went to the World Series and won the World Series, too. The season ended and I went home without a contract for 1983. During the winter, I was waiting to get a contract and McDonald finally acknowledged that I was going to be a roster player. He sent me a contract for the same money as the year before, $200,000.

I did some research and then I wrote a letter and sent it to McDonald pointing out that the average salary for a relief pitcher with at least six years of major league service was $435,000. I had 24 years of service and I was making $200,000. I wrote that I understood I wasn't going to go from $200,000 to $435,000, but I thought that after contributing to a team that won the World Series, $275,000 was a fair figure.

McDonald evidently went to Whitey and said that I was asking for $435,000 because I got a letter from Herzog scolding me. He said I was pricing myself out of the market. I tracked Herzog down by telephone and told him, "Whitey, that's not true. I told Joe McDonald what the average was and I told him exactly what I was asking."

That winter, the St. Louis baseball writers invited me to their annual dinner and I accepted. Just about that time, my dad's health took a turn for the worse — he eventually passed away on January 19 — but he was in a coma for a week before he died, so I called the Cardinals and told them I wasn't going to be able to make the dinner because I was in Michigan with my dad. Whitey thought I skipped the writers' dinner out of defiance because of the contract thing and that strained my relationship with Whitey a little.

We got the contract settled. I signed for the $275,000 I was asking, and I reported to spring training for the 1983 season. That winter, the Cardinals had signed a minor league free agent named Dave Von Ohlen, a left-handed pitcher. The season started and Von Ohlen was on the team, and the phone would ring in the bullpen, and where it had always been my call, all of a sudden, it was Von Ohlen's. I said to our bullpen coach, Dave Ricketts, that I could tell they were phasing me out.

I didn't pitch much in the first half of the season. It got close to the All-Star break and we had a couple of pitchers hurt. In the last game before the All-Star break, I was brought in to pitch the last three innings and clean up in a lopsided win. After that, I told...