While packing for the trip to Arizona and thinking of spring trainings past, I wondered of the whereabouts of Robert V. Whitlow, the Air Force colonel who put in a two-year hitch with the Cubs. Not many fans remember Whitlow, and the few who do seem to believe the system of rotating head coaches-in place of the conventional field manager-was his idea.
Wrong.
“I was the guy who stopped it,” Whitlow said.
I reached him at his winter home in Tubac, Ariz., which is about 40 miles south of Tucson. He summers in Harbor Springs, Mich.
It was an unusual story. Whitlow was the athletic director of the Air Force Academy. He was approaching retirement and was in Chicago to confer with the late Mayor Richard J. Daley about the first appearance here of the academy’s football team.
“When I finished with Mayor Daley that morning, I called Bud Offield,” Whitlow recalled. “Bud was Mr. Wrigley’s nephew and worked for the gum company. He was one of my golfing buddies in Michigan.
“Bud said, `Come on over (to the Wrigley Building Restaurant) and have lunch with us.’
“Mr. Wrigley came down-joined us. And that’s how it all started,”
Three months later, on Jan. 10, 1963, Whitlow was the Cubs’ Athletic Director. It was another of owner Philip Wrigley’s pioneer adventures. Nobody in baseball, before or since, has had the title of athletic director.
More astonishing was that Whitlow, without previous experience in professional baseball, was put in charge of the entire baseball operation. Even John Holland, who had been functioning as the club’s general manager, reported to him.
Whitlow was then 43, with a pleasing personality. He is huge, 6 feet 5 inches, 230 pounds.
“He has the size that commands respect,” Wrigley said.
Wrigley also was impressed with Whitlow’s knowledge of the latest advances in nutrition and physical training. This was in the early days of the space program and the colonel was aware of the breakthroughs in physical fitness, long before the exercise machines and the weight training regimens.
“I was ahead of my time,” Whitlow said. “None of the ballclubs had special training rooms. Now they have as many as two and three rooms filled with the latest machines.”
When Whitlow joined the club in spring training he announced he would work out with the players. Equipment manager Yosh Kawano gave him uniform No. 1.
“I guess it was a joke,” Whitlow said. “But I didn’t know the difference.”
When I saw Billy Williams at the recent Cub Convention, I asked if he remembered Whitlow. Williams, at that time, was starting his third full season with the Cubs.
“I don’t remember too much about him,” Williams said. “Wasn’t he a big guy?”
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During the workouts Whitlow stationed himself in left field, catching flyballs. Whitlow figured that being on the field and dressing in the clubhouse would bring him closer to the players.
Nobody seemed to mind. There were no jokes-until Whitlow began passing around little chocolate milk balls.
“The players were eating too many hot dogs,” Whitlow explained. “I was trying to come up with an energy food. I found a company that was into that sort of thing. They were patterned after chocolate milk balls, but they had a lot of vitamin C. The players liked them, but after a while they sort of lost interest.”
When Whitlow took over, the indications were the Cubs were likely to continue their program of revolving head coaches. Wrigley said he looked up the word “manager” in his dictionary and insisted a definition was “dictator.” Said Wrigley, “Heavens, we don’t need a dictator.”
Wrigley was also weary of firing his managers. To avoid further dismissals, he came up with the idea of rotating the coaches in the managers’ chair. Wrigley soon learned the problem was he didn’t have enough good players. In the first year of the experiment, the Cubs finished seventh; the next year they were ninth.
Whitlow said he, too, might take a turn as the Cubs’ head coach. But two weeks before the 1963 season began he decided one man was preferable. Bob Kennedy then was named head coach and directed the Cubs for the next 2 1/2 seasons. Kennedy was succeeded by Lou Klein, who finished the ’65 season. The Leo Durocher Era began in 1966.
By this time Whitlow was gone. He was dismissed on Jan. 8, 1965, two years after he had been hired. There was no official announcement until two weeks later when Richard Dozer, a Tribune baseball writer, asked Holland, “Where is the colonel?”
“Since you asked,” Holland said, “he has tendered his resignation effective Jan. 31.”
The last time I saw Whitlow was about 25 years ago when he was living in Paradise Valley, Ariz. He and his wife Cornell invited me to dinner. As I was leaving, Whitlow went into a closet and extracted a suitcase with the Cub logo.
“Would you give this back to Yosh?” Whitlow said. “I won’t be needing it anymore.”