Review of "One More for the White Rat"

Continuing my baseball theme for the start of the 2025 season, this was a very quick and enjoyable read about the 1987 St. Louis Cardinals.  Admittedly, I mainly wanted to read this book's last chapter on the World Series that year - I explain why at the end of the review.

Title/Author: “One More for the White Rat: The 1987 St. Louis Cardinals Chase the Pennant” by Doug Feldman

Rating: 5 of 5 stars (excellent)

Review: The St. Louis Cardinals are one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball.  They have won the World Series 11 times, second only to the New York Yankees.  They have won the National League (NL) title a total of 19 times, third behind the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers and New York/San Francisco Giants.  One of those years that they won the NL pennant but not the World Series was 1987 and their season that year is captured in this book by Doug Feldman.

Sometimes a book that describes one particular year or season for a sports team will not only discuss the team and its play on the field, but will also discuss political and social issues of that year.  Sometimes that enhances the book’s theme, sometimes it will distract the reader from it.  In the case of this book, it’s neither – Feldman very rarely mentions anything aside from baseball.  If there is something aside from the Cardinals, their players or their opponents, it’s very brief.  An example is the stock market crash of October 19 of that year.  Feldman just wrote about it in one sentence, then went back to the main subject, that year’s World Series between the Cardinals and the Minnesota Twins.

Sticking with baseball information throughout the book was a good decision by Feldman as his writing about the Cardinals was excellent.  A reader will learn about just about every player on that team.  While it would be expected to have information on stars like Ozzie Smith, Willie McGee and John Tudor, it was also very good to read about younger players who were up and coming such as Danny Cox or veterans who were important to the team but didn’t get a lot of playing time such as Tom Lawless.  Name just about any player on that Cardinals team and chances are a reader will find something about him.

Of course, given the nickname of the team’s manager, Whitey Herzog, is in the title of the book (“the White Rat”) there is plenty to learn about him as well. Herzog had the reputation of having the Cardinals play “small ball” and steal a lot of bases, after having previously been the manager of the Texas Rangers, California Angels, and Kansas City Royals.  It was the latter team where he had his first taste of success, but Herzog’s story in the book really begins not when he started with the Cardinals, but when the lost to Herzog’s former team (Royals) in the 1985 World Series.  This shows how focused the book is on the 1987 team as that is when the drive for their 1987 success started. 

While overall the book is excellent and I enjoyed the whole story, I should add a disclaimer that as a Twins fan, my favorite chapter was about the 1987 World Series, where the Twins defeated the Cardinals 4 games to 3 – it was the first World Series in which the home team won every game.

I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a review copy of the book. The opinions expressed in this review are strictly my own.  

Link: https://www.amazon.com/One-More-White-Rat-Cardinals/dp/1496241401/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0