Oct 26 2013 04:18 PM
Re: Same Old Same Old Same Old: Threading the 2013 World Ser
One point in the Cardinals' favor, I've decided (though they need lots of points to gain my favor): Bill DeWitt really sweats the things an owner should sweat, as Paul Lukas found out over the past offseason.
Try to picture certain other club owners in the National League a) giving such matters any thought; b) being able to articulate it; or c) not just leaving the whole thing to the discretion of the crooked equipment manager for a generation. |
The NYT catches up with the uni-conscious and detail oriented DeWitt
On Baseball
Cardinals’ History Remains in the Details
By TYLER KEPNER
Published: October 25, 2013
ST. LOUIS — The apostrophe in the Baltimore Orioles’ alternate logo faces the wrong way. The Mets have no pattern for their choice of jerseys on any given day. The Philadelphia Phillies forgot to make a press pin for their last World Series appearance. It was DeWitt’s bat-boy uniform that the St. Louis Browns’ Eddie Gaedel wore in 1951. Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press  In keeping with tradition, David Freese and the Cardinals will wear their Saturday alternate jerseys, with St. Louis across the chest, for Game 3. Such oversights might not bother most baseball executives. But most executives are not named DeWitt. In this family, whose roots reach back nearly a century in the game, details matter. When the St. Louis Cardinals take the field for Game 3 of the World Series against the Boston Red Sox, they will wear their cream-colored Saturday alternate jerseys, with St. Louis across the chest. In Game 4, they will wear their Sunday navy cap, with a red brim and the logo of a bird on a bat. On Monday, in Game 5, they will wear their usual home combination: primary white jersey, primary red cap. The Cardinals never wear a colored, softball-style jersey, and they never deviate from their schedule. The consistency of a classic look is part of who they are. “In some respects, what makes the Cardinals fun and interesting and cool is that some of these other franchises don’t do it,” said Bill DeWitt III, the team president, whose father owns the team. “If every team stayed to the pattern of home whites and road grays, there wouldn’t be anything special to preserving it. When other teams do that stuff, it doesn’t necessarily bother me, in the sense that we can play off of that.” Bill DeWitt Jr., 72, bought the Cardinals for $150 million from Anheuser-Busch in 1995. He had previously been a limited partner in the Texas Rangers, putting together the investors in George W. Bush’s ownership group, and had nearly purchased the Orioles. Owning the Orioles would have been fitting, since Bill DeWitt Sr., who died in 1982, had owned their ancestors, the St. Louis Browns. But the Cardinals also had special appeal, because DeWitt Sr. had started in baseball selling soda at Cardinals games in 1916. He soon became a favorite of Branch Rickey, the Hall of Fame executive and father of the modern farm system. “He was very focused on scouting and player development,” DeWitt Jr. said of his father. “He grew up under Branch Rickey, and when they were adding all those teams, he would go out in the field and do a lot of that work for Rickey. He thought a lot of him and would say so.” By the 1940s, DeWitt Sr. was running the Browns, winning their only American League pennant in 1944 and selling to the maverick Bill Veeck in 1951 but remaining in the front office. That August, Veeck hatched a stunt to send the 3-foot-7 Eddie Gaedel to the plate in a game against the Detroit Tigers. Gaedel wore the uniform of the team’s 9-year-old bat boy: Bill DeWitt Jr. “It was a doubleheader, and between games of the doubleheader he popped out of a cake,” DeWitt Jr. said, recalling that Gaedel pinch-hit for Frank Saucier, a top prospect who was struggling. “Bobby Cain pitched, and I think the first two pitches were overhand. They were up there — balls — so I think he threw the last two underhand. He couldn’t throw strikes, walked him, and then they pinch-ran for him. That was it. So I got my uniform back at the end of the game.” For 25 years or so, through DeWitt Sr.’s eventual ownership of the Cincinnati Reds, the uniform — with jersey number 1/8 — hung in a closet, part heirloom, part costume. DeWitt Jr.’s sister, Dede, once wore it for Halloween. When Veeck was inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame, in 1991, the family lent the jersey to Cooperstown. Jeff Idelson, the Hall of Fame president, said the museum usually accepts only donations, not loans, unless no other artifact can be used to tell a story. DeWitt’s jersey — like Willie Mays’s glove from the 1954 World Series, on loan from the son of Giants pitcher Don Liddle — is the only known artifact of an indelible moment in history. “When you look at owners in the game today, there’s probably no one with a deeper historical sense of the game and its history than Bill,” Idelson said. DeWitt Jr.’s foundation in the game is reflected in the Cardinals’ largely homegrown roster. DeWitt Jr. adopted his father’s interest in the farm system and has emphasized its importance over the last decade. He communicates daily with the Cardinals’ general manager, John Mozeliak. DeWitt III, 45, oversees the Cardinals’ business operations and spearheads the team’s Ballpark Village project, a restaurant/retail space on the site of the old Busch Stadium beyond left field. It will open next spring and include a St. Louis baseball museum, a special passion for an avid collector. DeWitt III owns a full set of World Series press pins, dating to 1911, and designs the Cardinals’ versions. He took special care in designing the team’s Saturday uniform, wanting to give it a retro feel that fits with a modern portfolio, and not make it a Turn-Back-the-Clock-Day gimmick. He also added a touch of authenticity this season that fans cannot even see. Decades ago, DeWitt III noticed, uniforms included the player’s last name, chain stitched, on the bottom left tail of the jersey front. That part of the jersey was tucked in, out of view on the playing field, but it was there, and DeWitt III wanted to bring it back. This was surprisingly problematic. Retailers are supposed to market authentic jerseys to fans, down to the last detail, and adding a tiny, chain-stitched last name would add to the cost of an already pricey item. DeWitt III grew tired of the haggling. “Eventually I said, ‘We’re just going to do it for the players,’ ” DeWitt III said, and so it was done. When your name is DeWitt, you have the authority — and the sensibility — to make stylish statements of history. |
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/26/sport ... html?_r=1&
