The Cardinals Way (5 page)

The Cardinals drafted Keith Hernandez in 1971. He went on to win 11 Gold Gloves at first base, the most of anyone at the position in the history of baseball. But Kissell didn't just work with the future greats. Kissell had returned to the minor leagues once Red Schoendienst was replaced as manager by Vern Rapp. It was where he was most comfortable, most effective, and it allowed him to teach again.

“He could've left twice with Sparky Anderson,” Kissell's grandson Tommy Kidwell recalled as we talked in St. Petersburg in September 2014. “He could've gone to the Big Red Machine, he could've gone to Detroit, and he said thanks but no thanks.

“He could've gone from the minor leagues to the big leagues a second time, and he didn't want to. He wanted to stay with his family. His loyalty to the Cardinals—he was not a threat to anybody else's job because he didn't want anybody else's job. He wanted to do what he was there to do, which was coach and help young guys. Even in his last days, when I was managing in rookie ball, his love was for rookie ball and the lower levels, more so than Double-A, Triple-A, where guys are less coachable, think they know it all, more set in their ways, and less likely to learn. So he was always better at the lower levels, where most guys, frankly, don't want to be for a long time. They want to move up.”

And in 1978, another of Kissell's projects was an undrafted free agent who'd struggled to get playing time in college, a young infielder named Steve Turco, discovered at one of those tryout camps Branch Rickey created, and which had allowed the Cardinals, thirty-eight years before, to discover George Kissell.

Turco had been drafted by the Indians out of high school, but elected to go to Florida State. However, he clashed with the coach there, who wanted to move the infielder to the mound. Finally, when he arrived in the Cardinals' Instructional League, George Kissell was waiting for him.

“When I think about the first time I ever saw George, I was down in St. Pete, hitting in the batting cage,” Turco told me in May 2014, as we sat and watched the extended spring-training Cardinals face the Mets on a back field in Jupiter, Florida. A sign honoring George Kissell was visible from the silver bleachers where we sat. “I happened to be taking batting practice, and George comes by. I don't know who he is, and he says, ‘Hey, we need to go pick 'em up'—he's telling us about picking up [stray baseballs in the cage]. He says, ‘You don't pick 'em up, you don't get to hit.' I said to somebody, ‘Who is that?' Someone said, ‘That's George Kissell.'” Turco shrugged, as he had that day. “‘No,' he said, ‘That's the Man.'

“After that, knowing who he was—I think what George saw in me was somebody who worked hard. When you're somebody who put in the extra time, the extra effort, I think George appreciated that. And in my case—he was there for me in every way.”

For Turco, that meant on-field things, but it meant other things, too—how to carry yourself, little details as seemingly insignificant as wearing socks in the clubhouse. Talking the game for hours. But it all began with endless repetition on the field.

“I remember that first spring training,” Turco said. “We'd have to take a bus, and they'd drop us off across the street from the hotel, a busy road. I had trouble even walking across, my leg was so sore, after we were done for the day. Bucket after bucket of ground balls. Things we don't necessarily do as much anymore because we're sensitive to things—the arm care of players. But back then, though, it was bucket after bucket. And George liked the work. Not only the time he put in with us, but the appreciation we had for him doing it for us. It was one of those things where I was indoctrinated quickly into George's style.

“The things I am in the game today, I owe to George.”

Turco held his own in 1979, putting up a respectable .254/.326/.303 line, playing shortstop for the Gastonia Cardinals of the Western Carolinas League. He also took the opportunity to go to the league's All-Star Game, mostly to sit and watch with Kissell.

“I'll never forget, the first year I was playing, we played 138 games in 140 days. We only had two days off, and one of our two days was the league All-Star Game. The game was being played in Gastonia, which was our home field, and George was there. So I went to the game—I was the only player there who wasn't playing in the game.

“So I sat there with George, and he said, ‘Look out there.'”

Everyone I ever spoke to who knew Kissell immediately slipped into an impression of Kissell when quoting him. It's generally agreed that John Mabry, the St. Louis hitting coach, is the best of the Kissell imitators, but they are omnipresent around Kissell stories. Anyway … “‘Look out there. See that shortstop?' I said, ‘I see him.' ‘What can he do that you can't? He can't run with you. He can't throw with you. He may have better hands, but you can hit like he can. So what can he do that you can't do?' Well, it turned out, it was Ryne Sandberg. He only went on to be a Hall of Famer. But especially if he thought you had some ability, he pushed you.”

That continued into the 1980s, Kissell's fifth decade with the Cardinals. Ask Terry Pendleton about the year he came to camp overweight. Kissell said nothing, but had him come in early, stay late, hit him about ten thousand ground balls. You didn't say no to Kissell. The pounds melted away in the Al Lang Field sunlight. Pendleton went on to win three Gold Gloves at third base, the 1991 NL MVP, played in five different World Series.

Kissell-trained Cardinals helped St. Louis win National League pennants in 1982, in 1985, in 1987. And those who went to other organizations didn't forget Kissell's help, either.

I could not be in the big leagues if it weren't for Mr. Kissell.

—
A
NDY
V
AN
S
LYKE
6

Dear George,

Here's a letter to let you know I'm alive and kicking in San Diego. Things are looking up for me now, and I'm about to turn the corner.

I wanted to write and tell you how much your tutelage and instruction meant to me. While everybody else is busting their tails to learn them, the fundamentals are coming second nature to me. It is mainly because of your time and effort that I am ahead of the game there. I used to dread your chalkboard sessions in instructional league, but now I see they were of great necessity.…

Say hi to your wife, and good fishing!

Gratefully,

Terry K

—L
ETTER
FROM
T
ERRY
K
ENNEDY
TO
G
EORGE
K
ISSELL
, 1980. K
ENNEDY
WENT
ON
TO
MAKE
THE
A
LL
-S
TAR
TEAM
FOR
THE
P
ADRES
IN
1981,
THEN
ANOTHER
THREE
TIMES
.
HE
WAS
THE
STARTING
CATCHER
FOR
TWO
N
ATIONAL
L
EAGUE
PENNANT
WINNERS
:
THE
1984 P
ADRES
AND
THE
1989 G
IANTS
.

Jim Leyland took the Pirates to three straight NL East titles in 1990 to 1992. He also had a spring ritual: en route to camp, he'd stop in St. Petersburg and have himself a fishing trip/study session with George Kissell.

As Kissell taught John Mabry to play third base, another project, another decade, another Boyer stand-in doing the same things in the same way more than forty years later, one of Kissell's other third basemen, Joe Torre, managed the Cardinals, then the Yankees. He had a bit of success in New York: World Series titles in 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, and a string of postseason appearances unbroken from 1996 to 2007.

The only other manager to win a World Series during that 1996–2000 Torre run? Kissell's fishing partner, Leyland, with the 1997 Marlins.

Meanwhile, Turco's career did not take off the way Sandberg's did. He reached Double-A, but found himself playing in St. Petersburg, in the Florida State League, for several years. Finally, the Cardinals released him in 1984, and he made up his mind to go play overseas, accepting a chance to play in Italy.

George Kissell had other plans for him.

“I knew it would be a nice way to go and see Europe,” Turco told me. “Particularly Italy. I'd stay there for a year. They played twice a week, they had two practices, you'd sightsee three days a week.

“Anyway, I had it all set, and [then Cardinals minor league manager] Jim Riggleman calls me. And he said, ‘Listen, they called, and I told them you can do whatever their needs are. But before you make that decision to go, why don't you give [then Cardinals director of player development] Lee Thomas a call?”

The Kissell plan for Turco had been set in motion.

“I'd played with Lee Thomas's son, Darren Thomas, and he said, ‘Listen, why don't you give Lee a call?' This is all the same day, I get three phone calls.

“And finally, it was George. And George says, ‘Give Lee a call,'” with Turco slipping into a Kissell impression.

“And I knew that George was instrumental in my getting that job. Because this is what he did. You talk about continuity—what George always believed was that you don't always groom players. You groom coaches and managers.”

Turco has been with the Cardinals ever since. He managed Glens Falls, then the Cardinals' short-season Appalachian League team in Johnson City, Tennessee.

Kissell kept right on coaching. It was amusing, in retrospect, to read all the letters and articles that talked about his imminent retirement. The reporter from the
St. Petersburg Times,
back in 1996, sounded pretty sure that would be Kissell's final year. Virginia told that reporter Kissell, then seventy-seven, had been threatening to retire every year since he was sixty-three. The Hernandez letter from earlier in the chapter is in conjunction with a free trip the Cardinals gave to Kissell in 2002, to be used once he retired. (Tommy Kidwell confirmed that Kissell never went on the trip.) Kissell kept on working right until the end.

This is not to say that he and Virginia were separated all those years. Every season, Kissell would get into his car and travel the country, making stops wherever Cardinals minor leaguers played. And Ginny was right alongside him.

“To my lovely wife,” Kissell inscribed a picture of himself. “The success I've achieved in life and in this game has been entirely through your patience, inspiration and love.” They estimated they'd make about two hundred stops every summer.

Kissell never missed a day of mass, either. The lifelong Catholic made a promise back in 1964 to God that should his son, Richard, get admitted to medical school, he'd go to mass every morning for the rest of his life.

For Sunday day games, he used to have the socks and other baseball accoutrements on under his church clothes. It was for efficiency, his grandson says, but it represented more than that.

No one around baseball who knew him doubted the importance of his family to him. Bobby Valentine heard how amused Ginny was by his stunt, after an ejection, of returning to the dugout in a Groucho Marx disguise. He sent her a signed photo of himself in disguise, inscribed, “Have a laugh on me.”

Kissell got the call back to the major leagues in 1999, when Tony La Russa asked him to return and be his additional coach.

The 2000 Cardinals won 95 games and advanced to the NLCS. The 2001 Cardinals won another 93 games. La Russa credited Kissell for much of his own managerial thinking piloting the 2006 Cardinals and then the 2011 Cardinals to World Series wins.

The way that he taught engaged and involved players. George had a love for the game, a love for the people who play the game, a love for teaching the game, a love for understanding the game, and relaying that and teaching that to people—every day. There were instances every day. Personally, the way he rooted for me to succeed, more than I rooted for myself sometimes. Understanding that he gave, no matter what, his time, and that, to me, is more important than anything, ever, that somebody would care for you that much that they would take their time, and teach you what they knew.

—
C
ARDINALS HITTING COACH
J
OHN
M
ABRY, IN
A
UGUST 2013 INTERVIEW

Hitter grasps bat in both hands balanced by choking bat.

1. Takes ball in right hand. Tosses it up and hits and runs, swinging down on ball. Repeats
15 swings
. (Does it slowly.)

2. 2 hands on bat—roommate/coach soft tosses 20 pitches and hitter hits and runs swinging down on ball. Repeat 20 times.

3. Hitter on floor or ground with left arm at 1 o'clock (5 pound weight).

—
G
EORGE
K
ISSELL DRILL FOR SWITCH-HITTERS, AS RECORDED ON
V
IRGINIA
K
ISSELL PERSONALIZED STATIONERY, LIKELY BY
V
IRGINIA

 

Dear George,

As I look forward to spring training and the upcoming year in Louisville, I didn't want another season to start without thanking you for everything you have done for me.

I know my assignment to Louisville would have never happened without you. I can't begin to tell you how much I fully appreciate being in your presence and I fully appreciate the personal interest you have taken in me.

Your knowledge of the game of baseball, that you passed along to me, is absolutely priceless. In fact, your knowledge of the game, along with your enthusiasm, dedication and loyalty certainly go unmatched by anybody in baseball.