When August A. Busch Jr. fired general manager Bing Devine in August 1964, it seemed all but certain that Cardinals manager Johnny Keane would soon join his former boss among the unemployed.
When Keane and the Cardinals surprised everyone by surging to their first World Series championship in 18 years, Busch decided to keep his manager on for another year. However, Keane shocked everyone once again when he announced his resignation at a press conference that was originally intended to celebrate his new contract.
Keane’s 35-year career with the Cardinals included time as a minor league infielder, player-manager, and coach before he joined the big-league coaching staff under manager Solly Hemus. When Hemus was fired in 1961, Keane was named manager. A baseball lifer who studied for the priesthood before joining the Cardinals, Keane was beloved by his players.
“Johnny Keane spent 21 years managing in the minor leagues, which suggests, quite accurately, that he was a patient man,” Bob Gibson wrote in his autobiography. “He was, in fact, the closest thing to a saint that I came across in baseball.”[1]
“Johnny Keane was one of the nicest persons ever in sports,” added Jack Buck in his own autobiography.[2]
Keane led the Cardinals to a 47-33 record after taking over for Hemus in 1961, then followed that performance with an 84-win season in 1962. In 1963, the Cardinals won 93 games and placed second in the National League, giving the club high hopes for the 1964 campaign.
The Cardinals got off to a slow start, however, and on June 17, with a 30-31 record, they sat in eighth place in the 10-team National League. Busch responded by firing Devine; however, he was more than willing to fire the manager Keane as well.
As the Cardinals staggered out of the gate, former Gashouse Gang shortstop Leo Durocher, who had won National League pennants with both the Dodgers and Giants, made a bid for Keane’s job. Now a coach for the Dodgers, Durocher was in St. Louis with the Dodgers in mid-August when Cardinals broadcaster Harry Caray invited him to the broadcast booth for an interview on the pregame show.[3]
When the conversation turned to Durocher’s future as a manager, he told Caray, “If somebody came to me and asked me to manage a team with some talent on it—a team like the Cardinals here—well, I’d jump at it in a minute. Because a club like the Cardinals should be winning.”[4]
That day’s audience happened to include Busch, and the owner instructed Caray to bring Durocher to the beer mogul’s estate the following morning.[5] Durocher described the scene in his book, Nice Guys Finish Last:
When we arrived at Mr. Busch’s estate at Grant’s Farm, Harry said that he’d wait in the car. A servant opened the door and took me the distance of a couple of city blocks to the living room. Then we went through a couple of more rooms and out to a screened-in porch where Gussie was having his breakfast.
It was a very hot Sunday morning, and his kids were riding back and forth outside on their ponies. I had a cup of coffee and a sweet roll with him. The small talk was kept to a minimum.
Gussie wanted to know whether I would be interested in managing his ball club next year if the job should become available. The job, as everybody knew, was going to become available. Busch had fired his general manager, Bing Devine, a couple of weeks earlier and it was common talk that Johnny Keane had been kept on only because it hadn’t been considered good policy to let both the manager and general manager go in the middle of the season.[6]
When Busch finished his breakfast, he and Durocher retired to the beer baron’s office, where Busch announced that the job would be his. First, however, Busch wanted to clear it with Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley. Unfortunately, O’Malley was on safari in Africa and was unavailable.[7] Durocher claims that he warned Busch things could change while he waited for O’Malley’s response.
“The last thing I said before getting up was that it was going to be very hard to keep our agreement out of the newspapers,” Durocher recalled. “‘How do you think Johnny Keane is going to feel when he hears about this? Because you’re not out of it yet, Gus. You’re only seven and a half games out, you could win this thing yet. Anything can happen in this game.’”[8]
Indeed it could.
As rumors swirled about his future with the club, Keane and the Cardinals pulled themselves back into the pennant race. By September 22, the Cardinals were in third place and had trimmed Philadelphia’s lead to five games.
At the same time, rumors regarding Busch’s meeting with Durocher began to swirl. United Press International (UPI) reported that Keane would be replaced within two weeks. In response, Busch denied that the meeting with Durocher had taken place and told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “I have great admiration for Durocher and I heard that recent radio interview in which he made a pitch for a managerial job, but I don’t know whether we’ll make a change or not. It was hard enough to let Bing go – I consider Bing one of the finest fellows I’ve ever met – and it was a tough move to make. It would be another tough move to decide to let Keane go.”[9]
When asked whether he thought Keane had done a good job to that point in the season, Busch was noncommittal, saying, “Frankly, I have no comment on that.”[10]
After learning of the meeting between Busch and Durocher, Keane called his friend Bill Bergesch, who had been the general manager at Omaha when Keane was the manager. Bergesch was now the assistant general manager with the Yankees.[11] According to Peter Golenbock, author of The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, Keane signed a contract for the 1965 season with the Yankees on September 28.[12]
That same day, Keane wrote a letter of resignation that he planned to give Busch whenever the Cardinals’ season ended. Only he and his wife knew that he planned to quit.
“I didn’t want to upset the players,” Keane said.[13]
Ironically, after Keane made the decision to leave the only MLB team he had ever worked for, Busch changed his mind about his 52-year-old manager. On October 2, five days after Keane penned his resignation letter, Busch visited him in the clubhouse and offered him a new contract. Keane demurred, saying that he preferred to wait to discuss his contract until after the season.[14]
With an 11-5 win over the Mets on the final day of the regular season, the Cardinals clinched the pennant, finishing one game ahead of the Reds and Phillies. Their late-season surge meant they would meet another team that came on strong: the Yankees, who had been in third place as late as September 16 before an 11-game win streak pushed them into first place.
In a classic World Series, the Cardinals captured the title in seven games. After taking the loss in Game 2, Gibson won Game 5, then struck out nine Yankees in a complete-game effort in Game 7.
With the championship in hand, Busch called a press conference for the following morning at which he planned to announce a new contract for Keane. Instead, Busch was in for a surprise. When Keane arrived 15 minutes after the press conference was scheduled to begin, he entered Busch’s office and handed him the letter of resignation he had written weeks earlier.
In part, the letter read: “This is to submit my resignation as field manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, effective at the end of the last championship National League game, whether it be at the end of the regular season or at the completion of the World Series. I want you to know that I have enjoyed working for you since you have owned the Cardinals, as well as the many years I spent with the organization prior to that time. I resign my position with the friendliest feelings and wish nothing but success to you and your fine Cardinal team.”[15]
Unaware of the letter’s contents, Busch shoved the letter into his pocket and encouraged Keane to hurry toward waiting press.
“I think you’d better read that before we go in there,” Keane said.
When Busch said he would read it after the press conference, Keane insisted. That was when executive vice president Dick Meyer asked to see the letter. After reading its contents, Meyer stopped Busch.
“We can’t go in there,” he said.
“Why not?” Busch asked.
“He’s not going to manage,” Meyer answered. “He’s resigning.”
Busch was shocked. “I’m sorry, Mr. Busch,” Keane said. “I’ve made other plans.”[16]
When Busch and Keane finally spoke to the press, they announced Keane’s resignation. It marked just the third time in history a manager had not returned after winning the World Series and the first time since Cardinals player-manager Rogers Hornsby was traded to the Giants after the 1926 season.
“It’s hard to leave the players,” Keane said. “During the last 30 days, during the stretch run, we have become a closely knit unit. I have become closer to the players than with any other ball club I’ve been with before. I’ve been one of the boys and liked it.”[17]
When asked by reporters why he quit, Keane said it “was an accumulation of a lot of little things,” including Devine’s firing earlier that season.[18]
“Keane was understood to have resented the interference of Branch Rickey, senior consultant, and the mid-August dismissal of general manager Bing Devine,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch sportswriter Neal Russo wrote. “Keane also was believed to have been upset during the period that the Cardinals reportedly were thinking of Leo Durocher as his successor.”[19]
For his part, Busch admitted his was astonished by Keane’s announcement. “I tried to find the main reason why John is resigning,” he said. “I don’t know what caused him to make this decision. This came as a complete bombshell this morning.”[20]
Keane was asked whether he might go to the Mets, where he could serve as a manager-in-waiting under 74-year-old Casey Stengel and be reunited with Devine, who had joined the Mets’ front office.
“It’s not true that I am going with the Mets,” he said. “That job would be a year from now or more, and I want a job now. I don’t want a coaching job. I want to manage.”[21]
Later that day, Keane’s plans became clearer as the Yankees announced that Yogi Berra would fulfill a different role in the organization and would not be the manager in 1965. Yankees general manager Ralph Houk said Keane was among four finalists for the position.[22] A few days later, the Yankees announced that Keane would manage the club the following season.
Keane’s tenure in New York didn’t last long. Saddled with an aging roster that was on the decline, Keane guided the team to just 77 wins in 1965. After the Yankees won just four of their first 20 games in 1966, he was fired. In January 1967, he was in his Houston home when he suffered a fatal heart attack.
Following the public perception that he and Durocher had chased the World Series-winning Keane from St. Louis, Busch decided not to name Durocher the Cardinals’ next manager. Instead, he sought recommendations from a committee that included the recently retired legend, Stan Musial. Musial campaigned for his longtime friend and teammate Red Schoendienst.
“With Musial leading my support, it came down to as much a public relations decision as a baseball one, I think, and that’s where I had the advantage,” Schoendienst wrote in his autobiography. “There was a lot of negative reaction to Johnny leaving, and the possible hiring of Durocher had stirred up a lot of people. The prevailing thought was the new manager needed to be someone who was a favorite of the fans, and luckily that turned out to be me.”[23]
Schoendienst went on to manage the Cardinals for 12 years, guiding the club to the World Series title in 1967 and another National League pennant in 1968.
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[1] Bob Gibson and Lonnie Wheeler (1994), Stranger to the Game, Penguin Books USA, Page 43.
[2] Jack Buck (2014), Jack Buck: That’s a Winner! Kindle Android version, Location 2066.
[3] Peter Golenbock (2011), The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, HarperCollins Ebooks, Page 460.
[4] Peter Golenbock (2011), The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, HarperCollins Ebooks, Page 460.
[5] Peter Golenbock (2011), The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, HarperCollins Ebooks, Page 460.
[6] Leo Durocher with Ed Linn (1975), Nice Guys Finish Last, University of Chicago Press, Page 344.
[7] Peter Golenbock (2011), The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, HarperCollins Ebooks, Page 461.
[8] Leo Durocher with Ed Linn (1975), Nice Guys Finish Last, University of Chicago Press, Page 345.
[9] Ed Wilks, “Busch Unsure on Keane,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 22, 1964.
[10] Ed Wilks, “Busch Unsure on Keane,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 22, 1964.
[11] Peter Golenbock (2011), The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, HarperCollins Ebooks, Page 461.
[12] Peter Golenbock (2011), The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, HarperCollins Ebooks, Page 468.
[13] Neal Russo, “Keane Quits As Manager Of Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 16, 1964.
[14] Neal Russo, “Keane Quits As Manager Of Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 16, 1964.
[15] Neal Russo, “Keane Quits As Manager Of Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 16, 1964.
[16] Peter Golenbock (2011), The Spirit of St. Louis: A History of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, HarperCollins Ebooks, Page 468.
[17] Neal Russo, “Keane Quits As Manager Of Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 16, 1964.
[18] Neal Russo, “Keane Quits As Manager Of Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 16, 1964.
[19] Neal Russo, “Keane Quits As Manager Of Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 16, 1964.
[20] Neal Russo, “Keane Quits As Manager Of Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 16, 1964.
[21] Neal Russo, “Keane Quits As Manager Of Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 16, 1964.
[22] Neal Russo, “Keane Quits As Manager Of Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 16, 1964.
[23] Red Schoendienst with Rob Rains (1998), Red: A Baseball Life, Sports Publishing, Champaign, Ill., Page 134.
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