RIP Red Schoendienst

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CardsofSTL
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Re: RIP Red Schoendienst

Post by CardsofSTL »

Freed Roger wrote:Help my memory, not talking about his stints as interim manager - I think Red would sometimes get the lineup Card when Whitey was ejected. No?

Was that the case under Torre and Larussa for a while?
Red was Whitey's bench coach so that would make sense.

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mikechamp
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Re: RIP Red Schoendienst

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I'd like to think Red, Stan and Kissell are sitting around talking baseball right about now. Oh, to be a fly on that wall.

And for those who may not have been listening to the radio last night, I'll try to share the story Vin Scully told John Rooney off-air:

Vin Scully wrote:I got in a cab in Milwaukee, and the cab driver took one look at my red hair and said, "Oh my goodness! I am so honored you are in my cab, Mr. Schoendienst."

And the cabbie went on and on about Red. I didn't have the heart to tell him I wasn't Red. When I got out of the cab, I tipped him more than I usually would, so that I didn't spoil Red's great reputation with this man.

And that was a running joke between Red and I. I'd see him from time to time and say, "Hey, you owe me some money."

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Donnie Ebert
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Re: RIP Red Schoendienst

Post by Donnie Ebert »

Freed Roger wrote:


3 min in, Gibson on Red.
Dan looks like he's working on his Jiminy Glick impression, but Gibson is always entertaining.

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lukethedrifter
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Re: RIP Red Schoendienst

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Joe Shlabotnik
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Re: RIP Red Schoendienst

Post by Joe Shlabotnik »

lukethedrifter wrote:
:-)

Nice.

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TigCards
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Re: RIP Red Schoendienst

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lukethedrifter wrote:
Awesome !

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Jocephus
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Re: RIP Red Schoendienst

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Jocephus
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Re: RIP Red Schoendienst

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http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/2372 ... -big-thing
A chance to remember a Redbirds icon

There are a couple of upcoming anniversaries I dredged up for a reason about to be made obvious. Next Thursday marks the 62nd anniversary of the day that the St. Louis Cardinals and hyperactive general manager Frank "Trader" Lane dealt Red Schoendienst away from his beloved Redbirds to the New York Giants in a nine-player swap, the kind of which we don't see much of anymore. Then, one year and one day later, the Giants sent Schoendienst to Milwaukee, where he helped spark the Braves to their first championship since 1914.

A lifelong Cardinal, Schoendienst needn't have felt bad about being traded. Lane once tried to trade Stan Musial to the Phillies before owner Gussie Busch put the kibosh on the deal. Anyway, Schoendienst eventually found his way back to the Cardinals as a player and never left again, save for a two-year spell as a coach with the Oakland A's in the 1970s. In his heart, the reddest of them all, he probably never really left.

All told, from the time he signed with the St. Louis organization in 1942, Schoendienst spent over 75 years in professional baseball. Schoendienst was baseball's oldest living Hall of Famer when he died Wednesday at age 95. As of this writing, funeral arrangements have not been announced, but presumably he will be laid to rest during the coming week.

I like to tell people that I've been heavily into baseball history literally the entire time I've been literate. The first book I read (after the children's books phase) was an anthology of the biographies of some of the great St. Louis Cardinals stars through the 1950s. Because of that book, and even though I've never been a Cardinals fan, my favorite historical player (i.e., one I never actually saw play) was Dizzy Dean. I got a little misty-eyed in Cooperstown last summer when for the first time I encountered Dean's uniform in a display at the Hall of Fame museum.

But elements of Schoendienst's story from that book have always stuck with me. First, like me, he was a rural Midwestener, having grown up in Germantown, Illinois. When he was a teenager, he nearly lost an eye when he was hammering nails into a barn and a nail ricocheted right into it. The injury caused him problems for years and even led to his decision to become a switch-hitter -- his vision problems made reading curveballs off righties problematic. Years later, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, though he didn't know that while playing all seven games of the 1958 World Series with the disease. He was expected to retire, but he went on to play for another five years.

Ten or 11 years ago, I was in St. Louis to cover a season-opening series. I had never worked a game there, and the day before the opener I was on the field during a workout. There was Schoendienst, in uniform, already in his mid-80s and still swinging a bat and pounding out grounders for infield practice. I knew he was still a coach for the team -- it was a title he never relinquished -- but to see him still that active, at that age, was unforgettable. Of course, no one around Busch Stadium seemed to think much about it. It was just Red.

Today, I'm thinking back to that book I read so long ago. Schoendienst. Musial. The Deans, Diz and his brother, Paul. Joe Medwick. Johnny Mize. Pepper Martin, who managed Schoendienst in the minor leagues. Frankie Frisch. Rogers Hornsby. Grover "Pete" Alexander. Marty Marion. Walker Cooper. Country Slaughter. There have been many great Cardinals since that era, when the majors didn't have another franchise west of the Mississippi and Cardinals baseball held sway over an enormous swathe of the country.

There will be many great Cardinals to come, but with Schoendienst's passing, the last vestiges of that original era, the one when the old Cardinals made St. Louis the baseball city we now know it as, are now truly gone. Nothing lasts forever, even if Red sometimes made it seem like it might.

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Jocephus
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Re: RIP Red Schoendienst

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dgooldDetail of the Red Schoendienst patch that will appear on #stlcards jerseys for remainder of the season. #HOF #Cardinals

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CardsofSTL
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Re: RIP Red Schoendienst

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To celebrate the life of Baseball Hall of Famer and former St. Louis Cardinals legend Cardinal Glennon, broadcaster Mike Shannon has announced a new campaign to have a wing at Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital named in honor of Red.
https://kmox.radio.com/articles/mike-sh ... ienst-name

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