The annual baseball writers’ dinner is a mixture of looking forward and backward. This year’s event, Sunday at the Marriott Grand Hotel downtown, had projections on the upcoming season by general manager John Mozeliak and manager Mike Matheny, a look back at the 2006 World Series championship team and sadder memories of some members of the baseball community who died in 2015.
Oh, and there were shots at the Rams.
Among those getting big ovations were the team’s owners. The DeWitt family, Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt Jr., and team president Bill DeWitt III, received the Red Schoendienst Medal for invaluable service to baseball. They’re the second recipients of the award, which was given in its initial year to former baseball Commissioner Bud Selig.
Schoendienst, who has been around so long that he knew Bill DeWitt Sr., the one-time owner of the St. Louis Browns, himself presented the medal this year.
“You couldn’t ask for a better award than the Red Award,” DeWitt Jr. said. “He represents the face of the Cardinals franchise and has for many years. It’s a great honor to receive.”
For DeWitt III, it was his second big ovation of the week. He and Blues owner Tom Stillman got a thunderous ovation at Scottrade Center on Thursday when they dropped a ceremonial first puck at the Blues game. The crowd also contributed to an anti-Stan Kroenke chant.
“I thank Tom for coming up with that idea,” he said. “He wanted to do something symbolic, to show we were recommitting to St. Louis. They started chanting something … that’s for another day. It felt bigger than me or anything.”
“Some insight on working for Bill,” Mozeliak said. “I think how lucky St. Louis is to have an owner like this, and in the last week it’s become glaring. He cares so much about the organization and the team and he’s as much a fan as you are and wants to win. The pressures of succeeding under him are real.”
Adam Wainwright shared the physical comeback award with Jaime Garcia. Wainwright tore his Achilles tendon in April, and it was thought he would miss the rest of the season, but he completed his rehab work in time to return in the regular season and then pitch in the playoffs.
“This has to be the least amount someone has played to get this award,” Wainwright cracked. “Eight innings. But they were eight important innings. Eight good ones. Since I didn’t do much, I accept this as a token of what I’m planning to do this season.”
(“The reasons you get awards every year,” said Mozeliak, “is because you’re a great speaker.”)
The dinner also remembered St. Louis native and Hall of Famer Yogi Berra — his daughter Lindsay Berra compared him to the St. Louis University billiken — who died in September and former Post-Dispatch columnist and Cardinals beat writer Joe Strauss, who died in December.
Former Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, whose postgame news conferences usually featured interactions with Strauss and became must-see viewing on Fox Sports Midwest, spoke about Strauss.
“It may seem strange to a lot of you that I was chosen to say something about Joe,” La Russa said. “You hear the expression love-hate; it was never that bad. It was tolerate on good days. …Over time, things improved as I really got to know him, even to the point I think we kind of liked each other, especially after September of 2011 (when La Russa retired). Joe was very, very knowledgeable about the game of baseball. I would say he was tied for first with anyone I ever met in the media about knowledge of the game. He would apply that knowledge to whatever story he was covering. Joe was fierece in following that story.”
The crowd gave a heartfelt “Looooooo” in honor of Cardinals Hall of Famer Lou Brock, a fixture at the dinner who couldn’t make it this year after losing his left leg below the knee in October after contracting an infection.
Cardinals reliever Mitch Harris got a standing ovation when the Naval Academy graduate was honored. The Cardinals drafted Harris out of college but had to wait for him to fulfill his five-year service commitment. And Harris had to do his part, getting his game up to a major-league level after five years where his baseball was limited to throwing with a ship’s cook on the flight deck when the seas were calm.
“Knowing I had to serve in 2008 (when he was drafted),” Harris said, “as a business decision that doesn’t seem that smart, knowing I couldn’t play for at least two years. Not only did they have to wait two, they had to wait five. When I called and asked if I could still come, they said absolutely, and I can’t say how much that meant to me. And it meant a lot to me to make their 13th round pick worthwhile.”
Mozeliak, in his annual forecast for the season, put his faith in the team’s youngsters.
“We look at our club moving forward, it’s about giving certain players a chance,” Mozeliak said. “We’re making a bet and hoping we’re right. The guys coming through the system is who we’re betting on. We’re creating a process, a process that produces major-league players. We’re going to give it a roll. There’s a lot of noise about what’s happening north of us. We see it, but we believe in what we have.”
