The year was 1978. And what a year it wasn’t. The Cardinals fired Vern Rapp as manager, replacing him with former Cardinals star Ken Boyer. The Cardinals went on to lose 93 games, their most since 1913 — when even future Hall of Famer manager Miller Huggins couldn’t prevent them from dropping 99.
Future Hall of Famer Lou Brock, 39, was benched by Boyer for most of the final month of Brock’s .221 season and there were whispers that he was finished. They were more than whispers, even one under this scribe’s byline although he mostly was citing other sources.