Bing Devine, Long-time Cards GM, dies at the age of 90

[redsmetz]

Here's a story from this morning's St. Louis Post Dispatch about Bing Devine who died Saturday at the age of 90. He was still employed by the club through last season despite some health issues in recent years. His tenure with the Cardinals dates back to Branch Rickey's days in the 1930's. He was GM when the nucleus of the 1960's clubs were constructed and he had a hand in the careers of several storied managers in the bigs. He even was a GM in the NFL and in soccer.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/stories.nsf/cardinals/story/5DFB4F8F90103AB38625727100169DBB?OpenDocument

[redsmetz]

Has WOY not been on today. I thought for sure he'd have some anecdote or another to share about Bing Devine.

He picked our pocket with Curt Flood


December 5, 1957: Traded by the Cincinnati Redlegs with Joe Taylor to the St. Louis Cardinals for Marty Kutyna, Ted Wieand, and Willard Schmidt.

Of course, he was the Cards' GM when Fred Hutchinson left and become the Reds manager in 1959.

[westofyou]

Has WOY not been on today. I thought for sure he'd have some anecdote or another to share about Bing Devine.

He picked our pocket with Curt Flood



Of course, he was the Cards' GM when Fred Hutchinson left and become the Reds manager in 1959.

That's because I posted it over on www.baseballmusings.com

But I'll post it here too.

Bing and Branch had quite the battle at the end of Branch's career. It carried over to Branch's personal pick Bob Howsam, who pretty much had a large part in building the 67-68 Cardinals.

Howsam was roasted for trading Bill White, Groat and Boyer from the Cardinals and later he tried to trade Carlton, Mike Shannon and Nelson Briles for Cardenas, Coleman and Joey Jay... that was shot down, then he tried to trade Carleton, Briles, Tolan and Alex Johnson for Billy Williams, which was shot down by the front office again.

Bing's cronies were all over Howsam and his second to last big trade for the Cardinals (Sadeki for Cepeda) That was enough for Bob, he took the Reds job, because he said no one will be telling me what to do.

Imagine what could have happened if Bing's cronies weren't so hostile to Howsam.

The seventies would have been very different in the Midwest.