As a descriptive phrase, it's pretty much a cliche. The standard description of the journeyman defensive specialist. "Good field, no hit." But were you aware that this pithy phrase, once described by a baseball writer as "baseball's most illiterate message", has a Cardinals connection?

Miguel Angel Gonzalez Cordero was born in Havana, Cuba on September 24, 1890, but for pretty obvious reasons when he broke into the National League with the Boston Braves he was known more simply as Mike Gonzalez. Mike had an interesting career, playing for 5 NL clubs (the Braves, the Reds, the Cardinals, the Giants, and the Cubs), but it will always be the St. Louis Cardinals that he's associated with, mostly because St. Louis became something of the touchstone of his career; no matter where he went he always seemed to end up back in St. Louis (he played 7 full seasons and part of an 8th for the Redbirds, the most seasons that he played with any club).

In 1922 and 1923 Gonzalez was spending some time in the minors, playing for the St. Paul Saints, then of the American Association, and having a stellar couple of seasons. Gonzalez was so well respected in the Twin Cities that in 1924, when Gonzalez had returned to the majors with (of course) the Cardinals, the owner of the Minneapolis franchise wired him for his opinion of a catching prospect whose contract Minneapolis was interested in purchasing.

The catching prospect was Moe Berg. Gonzalez's assessment of Berg was the 4-word gem that went down in baseball history: "Good field, no hit."

Gonzalez finished his playing career with the Cardinals in 1932, and after a stint in 1933 as a player-coach with the minor league club in Columbus, he returned to the Cardinals as a coach in 1934 (the Gashouse Gang; one of the most celebrated Cardinals teams in franchise history, and World Series champions that year) and two-time interim manager. In that capacity, Gonzalez made history; he was named interim manager on September 11, 1938 when the Cardinals fired long time manager Frankie Frisch, and thereby became the first Latino (and of course, the first Cuban born) manager in MLB history. Gonzalez, who was a good friend of and roommates with Frisch, agreed to manage only for the remainder of the season, and racked up an 8-8 record. Gonzalez moved back to the coaching box in 1939 as the Cards hired Ray Blades to manage the team, but Gonzalez got to manage the Cardinals one more time, when the team fired Blades in 1940 and called upon Mike to manage for a week, until the Cards hired Billy Southworth as their new manager.

But if Mike didn't make history for the rest of his coaching career, at least he was a participant in one of the more historic events in Cardinals history. It was, fittingly enough, Mike's last game as a coach for the Cardinals, and it was October 15, 1946. Sportsman's Park, St. Louis. Game Seven of the World Series between the Cardinals and the Boston Red Sox, bottom of the eighth inning, two out, and the score tied at 3 apiece. Enos Slaugher was at first base when Harry Walker lined Boston pitcher Bob Klinger's pitch into left-center field for a sure single, and "Country" commenced what has since become immortalized in Cardinals history as "The Mad Dash Home". To achieve it, he blew right past Gonzalez's frantic "stop" sign. Fortunately (for Slaughter and St. Louis), Boston center fielder Leon Culberson bobbled the ball slightly before throwing to shortstop Johnny Pesky. Then, Pesky either checked Walker on base or had a momentary brain spasm when faced with Slaughter's sheer audacity (the point will probably be argued by die-hard fans forever). In any event, the Cardinals took the lead and never relinquished it, and Mike Gonzalez was there to see it happen.

That was Gonzalez's last game as a Cardinals coach because of an unusual set of circumstances. Gonzalez owned and managed the Havana team in the Cuban Winter League, and that team had connections with the Mexican League, which enticed a number of major leaguers to jump their contracts to play in the Mexican League. When the dust cleared, a number of major league players and other personnel were banned from major league baseball, and Gonzalez was one of them. When he was reinstated (and offered a coaching job by the Braves), Gonzalez elected instead to remain in Cuba and manage his baseball interests there. A national hero in Cuba, Gonzalez was less hard-hit by Castro's "reforms" than many Cubans, and he eventually died in Havana on February 19, 1977, at age 86.

[By way of introduction, I'm a native of St. Louis, Missouri, who grew up watching the great Cardinals teams of the 1960s, and the somewhat less than stellar teams of the 70s. Unfortunately, I was away in Chicago finishing my education in 1982, and was in Washington, DC, doing my bit for King and Country in 1985 (working in the same office with two native Kansans who were KC Royals fans; they never let me forget that one, alas....). Fortunately I was around for 1987, but early in 2001 the company I was then working for transferred me to Memphis, TN. I'm only now getting around to forgiving TLR for bringing Albert Pujols up with the big club after spring training that year, instead of leaving him in Memphis so I could get a good look at him, but I will concede (once you beat me over the head with the 2001 NL Rookie of the Year selection a few times) that TLR probably made the right move there.

And of course, I spent all of last season wondering why in hell I'd ever accepted that transfer to Memphis.... --Len Cleavelin]