Wealth & Money Quote by Whitey Herzog

Herzog’s complaint lands with the weary authority of someone who won the old way and watched the ground move under his feet. He’s not romanticizing hustle or “intangibles” for the camera; he’s calling out a structural shift that turns team-building from craft into arms race. The line “there’s not any way to build a team today” is deliberately absolutist, the kind of hyperbole that signals frustration more than literal surrender. What he’s really saying: the skills he prized - development, scouting, continuity, clubhouse chemistry - have been devalued by a marketplace that can overwrite them in a single offseason.

The subtext is about control. Managers and front offices once sold fans a story: smart decisions, patient cultivation, a coherent philosophy. Herzog suggests that story no longer holds, because money can bulldoze narrative. “You could be the world champions” is the ultimate credential, and he treats it like a flimsy receipt; even the highest proof of competence doesn’t protect you from being leapfrogged by someone else’s spending.

Context matters here: Herzog came up in an era when free agency was reshaping baseball, and later decades only intensified the gap between big-market and small-market clubs. His rhetoric doesn’t just mourn competitive imbalance; it points to the emotional whiplash fans feel when championships stop functioning as a culmination and start looking like a temporary lease. In Herzog’s view, modern parity isn’t a promise - it’s a myth with a payroll.