I need to preface this with the fact that as of a young age, my grandfather taught me that the St. Louis Cardinals were the bane of baseball's existence due to the fact that in game 7 of the 1934 World Series, Joe Medwick slid hard into third base while the Cardinals were up 9-0, and continued to run up the score. Mind you, the first baseball game I ever watched was 53 years later, but regardless...

Doug Feldmann's One More For the White Rat tells the story of the 1987 St. Louis Cardinals. Incidentally, the first World Series I ever watched was the 1987 World Series between the Cardinals and Twins. Since this book gives a chronological blow-by-blow accounting of that Cardinals season, it's basically the immediate prequel to my baseball fandom. And granted, I never really knew much about that season other than the Twins won the World Series (spoiler alert) and that Mark McGwire hit a ton of home runs.

Feldmann digs deep for stories, interviewing several player participants and providing all kinds of human interest factoids on the season. This book is extremely detailed and it's interesting. I will admit for a person who inherited a dislike for the Cardinals, I did become bored with their continuous winning. I was more entertained with the flashbacks to their wreck of a season in 1986. But that's me.

It's well-researched and well-told. I don't know how much new information is presented since, as I have mentioned, I don't like the Cardinals, but most of it was new to me. I do think Cards fans may enjoy this more than others, but I also think that's probably the target audience and that's fine.

Note: Thank you to NetGalley, University of Nebraska Press, and author Doug Feldmann for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

In the 1980s, there didn’t seem to be one baseball team that was more successful than the others. Many different teams appeared in the playoffs and World Series, even the smaller-market teams. The St. Louis Cardinals, however, were a competitive team throughout the decade. Much of the credit for this must go to their legendary manager, Whitey Herzog, who was known by the nickname The White Rat.

One More for the White Rat chronicles the St. Louis Cardinals’ 1987 season. It wasn’t the last season Whitey would manage the Cardinals, but it was the last time they would appear in the postseason under his reign. He played a different kind of baseball, focusing more on the basics and getting runs through hits and stolen bases rather than splashy home runs.

Author Doug Feldmann appears to be a Cardinals fan. He’s written about a dozen books about baseball, most of them about the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1980s. I was moving into adulthood during this decade and can remember Whitey Herzog as a legendary manager, right up there with Tommy Lasorda and several others who seemed to be able to field competitive teams annually without breaking the bank on free agents.

With the 1987 season coming on the heels of the 1986 Mets World Series victory, there’s a lot about the Mets in One More for the White Rat. At the time, many people thought the Mets were going to be a dynasty. That didn’t quite happen. However, the author talks quite a bit about the Mets in the context of the Cardinals’ run for the pennant in 1987, and that made this Mets fan very happy. I especially enjoyed the charged moments between Herzog and Mets third baseman Howard Johnson, whom he repeatedly accused of corking his bat. Sorry, Whitey, HoJo was just that good.

Both teams suffered with injuries throughout the season, though. The continual injuries the Cardinals faced had Herzog scrambling to craft an effective lineup for his style of play. It all came down to the last weekend of the season with the Cardinals watching the Mets on their heels all season long until then. This was an era before there were wild card games and there was no designated hitter in the National League.

I enjoyed revisiting this season. Feldmann does a terrific job condensing it to the important games and chronicling them. This is definitely a book for the baseball fan, as it would have been hard for me to get through it without the coninual reference to the Mets. It’s really geared for fans of the Cardinals and of Whitey Herzog. Having been a fan during this era, I could appreciate this look at how he managed in a tough season. For Cardinals fans who were too young to remember these days, I think you’ll get a lot of enjoyment from this book.

For those of us who grew up as Cardinals fans in the St. Louis area, Whitey's story feels like a glowing chapter in an all-time favorite book. Feldmann manages to pull back the curtain on a period of baseball history that now feels like a distant dream, making it present and real once more.

The White Rat - one of the greatest managers ever that was truly a manager that shaped a team to fit the ballpark of the times. You can't tell the story of the 80's baseball without the Cardinals and Whitey Herzog. They were robbed in 85!