FORT MYERS, FLA. -- Whitey Herzog was managing the Kansas City Royals when Gene Mauch was hired to do the same for the Twins in 1976. This was the era when the debate was over whether to carry nine pitchers or 10 before the rosters were expanded on Sept. 1.
Either way, a manager in the American League had at least six players on his bench and could be liberal in platooning players. No one was more liberal in this than Mauch. He would play his handful of key guys most every day, and then go left-right at four positions.
I had a friend who covered the Royals and was tight with Herzog. On occasion, they would drink whiskey together into the late night after road games. And if the Twins happened to be the opponent, Whitey would threaten that he was going to start a righthander, get all of Mauch's lefties in the lineup, and then warm up a lefty and bring him in to start the second inning.
My second-hand account was that Whitey would make this threat, take a hit of fine alcohol, and then growl: "That would screw up the son of a ..."
Sad to say, Herzog never did take his own suggestion.
The debate switched from 9 or 10 pitchers to 10 or 11 some time in the '80s. It stayed that way for a couple of decades, before becoming 11 or 12 around the turn of the century, and now it's 12.
"Twelve or 13," Twins manager Ron Gardenhire. "That's what you really want to avoid -- 13 pitchers. You can't do much as a manager with three players on the bench, when two of them are a backup catcher and an extra infielder."
Phil Miller, the Strib's co-baseball writer, made a fine point when we were talking about this last night. "Most changes in modern theory about a sport make the game better," he said. "In baseball, the theory on pitchers, on how you have to protect them, has made it worse."
