Once Whitey Herzog officially is added to the list of Hall of Fame inductees on Sunday in Cooperstown, N.Y., there will be 20 men in the Hall who achieved most — if not all — their baseball fame as managers.

All have been elected through a variety of Veterans' Committee processes, and all those whose careers played out entirely in the 20th century have more big-league victories than Herzog's 1,281, except for one — Cardinals Hall of Famer Billy Southworth. He was enshrined posthumously two years ago and won 1,044 games while directing three consecutive pennant winners and two world champions while in St. Louis in the 1940s.

But, among the things that sets Herzog apart from the rest of his group is his history not only as a director of a big-league farm system, as he was with the emerging New York Mets teams before they won their first world title in 1969, but also as a general manager, as he was with the Cardinals and later with the California Angels.

Herzog was GM in name for a couple of years and de facto GM for a couple more as he made a dramatic change in the baseball culture of St. Louis. His signature moment — actually a week of moments — came in December 1980, when he traded 14 players and acquired 11 at the frenetic winter baseball meetings in Dallas.

Less than two years later, that translated into a World Series championship for the Cardinals, their first in 15 years.

One of Herzog's other early moves as general manager was to hire himself as manager for 1981 after he had stepped down as manager and moved to the front office late in the 1980 season.

"I could almost do what I wanted as long as (club president) Gussie Busch knew it before it got in the press," Herzog said.

Though his 17 seasons as a manager were not as many as most who are in the Hall of Fame, Herzog's teams won six division titles — three each in Kansas City and St. Louis — and three pennants, all in St. Louis.

The Cardinals won a seven-game World Series they probably should have lost in 1982 (Milwaukee's Rollie Fingers was hurt) and dropped seven-game Series in 1985 and 1987 that they probably should have won (Vince Coleman and then Jack Clark and Terry Pendleton were hurt).

Where does Herzog stand among the game's best managers? Consider:

Connie Mack, who also owned the Philadelphia Athletics, won 3,731 games as a big-league manager, but he also lost 4,024. Mack had nine pennants and five world champions but it took him 50 years to amass them.

New York Giants manager John McGraw, second on the career victories list with 2,763, was much more efficient, capturing 10 pennants and three World Series titles in 31 years with the Giants.

"Marse Joe" McCarthy was even more successful as his 2,126 career wins helped his teams win nine pennants — eight with the Yankees and one with the Chicago Cubs — and seven World Series, all with the Yankees.

Casey Stengel, who took over the Yankees in 1949, won 10 pennants and seven World Series in New York with only 1,905 managerial wins, not many of which came in far less successful tours with Brooklyn, the Boston Braves and the sad-sack New York Mets.

To Herzog, Stengel was the best manager he played for at the major-league level. "Casey Stengel was a tremendous baseball man, fundamentally probably the best teacher I've ever seen," Herzog said. "He told me things about baserunning and outfield play — cutoffs and relays — that I'd never ever heard, and I'd played for a lot of good managers."

Herzog's one World Series championship is matched by St. Louisan Earl Weaver, whose Baltimore Orioles appeared in three consecutive World Series from 1969-71 but defeated only Cincinnati in 1970 while losing to the Mets and Pittsburgh the other years. Weaver had 1,480 career victories.

One of two Hall of Fame managers (20th century) who won no World Series titles was "Senor" Al Lopez, whose clubs won 1,410 games, including pennants with the Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox. His 1954 Cleveland team was considered one of the great teams of all time, compiling an 111-43 record and winning the only American League title not captured by the Yankees in a 10-season span from 1949-58. But the Indians were swept in four games by the Giants in the World Series that year.

Counting his AL pennant with the White Sox in 1959, Lopez's teams were the only clubs to interrupt Yankees dominance from 1949-64.

The other nonwinner of a World Series who is in the Hall as a manager is Wilbert "Uncle Robbie" Robinson, who directed the Brooklyn Robins (the name was changed from Dodgers during his tenure) to National League pennants in 1916 and 1920. But Brooklyn was a long way from its first and only world title in 1955.

Herzog said there also is a bevy of qualified Hall of Fame candidates still managing.

"Bobby Cox, Tony La Russa, Joe Torre ... I think (Minnesota's Ron) Gardenhire is an outstanding manager. (Lou) Piniella, Jim Leyland, (Mike) Scioscia out in LA. There's about six or seven present-day managers that have got a chance to be in the Hall of Fame after they retire," Herzog said.

"I really believe that because they're all very good managers and it seems like today, with the money they're getting paid now, they last a little bit longer and stay at it a little bit longer.

"I got out at a young age and I wanted to. I don't know, I managed 18 years and I had a good relationship with Gussie Busch. I didn't think I'd be happy ever managing for anybody else because of our strong relationship. And I could've probably managed another 10 years, probably would've gotten in the Hall of Fame a little bit sooner. But I'm alive, healthy and very (appreciative) that I'm going to be a member of the Hall of Fame."

Again, though, none of these other managers was really a game-changer as an executive. Cox did not win any pennants as Atlanta's GM before he won 14 consecutive division titles as the Braves' manager. And Mack was forever tearing down his teams for financial reasons, much like the Florida Marlins of our time, rather than building them up like Herzog.

The word "game-changer" also could be applied to Herzog's style of play that he wanted to implement.

Los Angeles Angels manager Mike Scioscia, who was a catcher for some Dodgers teams trying to stop the Cardinals, said, "For a long time, Whitey was the gold standard in a lot of ways. His brilliance was in adapting to the talent that he had and not being afraid to go out there and do what he wanted. He wasn't trying to get a team to perform one way.

"When he saw the '85 Cardinals, he realized the real assets they had and he maximized them." That pennant-winning team stole 314 bases.

Dodgers manager Torre, who ranks fourth all-time in wins, said Herzog's advantage as a manager was that "he was uneasy to manage against.

"Whitey was a throwback. You knew how much he knew about the game. When I first started managing against Whitey, I'd been managing about six years (with the Mets) and you still were a little intimidated by what he brought to the table.

"The people he had were the product of his personality. He wanted to be unpredictable. He wanted to be relentless. He wanted to be aggressive.

"If there was one word to describe Whitey, it was aggressive. He never played for a tie."

Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda said, "He didn't play by the book. I don't know who the hell wrote the book, but he didn't play by it. He was a daring manager and they were tough to play against because you never knew what he was going to do."

One of the trademarks of Herzog teams was that they always were prepared and played with energy, whether in Kansas City or St. Louis.

"Players sort of lined up behind him," Torre said. "Whether you liked him or didn't like him really didn't have a lot to do with the fact that you trusted in the job — that he knew what the hell he was doing."

Lasorda said, "He's a Hall of Fame manager because he knew how to handle players. Players loved him. You don't see too many like him now."

Herzog finished his professional career as general manager of the Angels. This was before Scioscia came on board but Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon was in the Angels' system then and Scioscia said Maddon, now the Tampa Bay manager, talked of Herzog's "clarity and common sense.

"And (former pitching coach) Claude Osteen told me," Scioscia said, "that no one's ever been around who was better after a game to go pitch by pitch and tell you what he thought won or lost that game."

Scioscia never managed against Herzog but saw him plenty in Dodgers-Cardinals games. "Sometimes you don't understand a lot what managers on the other side are doing when you're playing," Scioscia said. "You're just thinking about playing.

"But now after talking with guys ... people would talk about what he did with teams and his evaluation skills were incredible."

Cardinals manager La Russa, third on the all-time wins list with more than 2,600, came into the American League as a manager with the Chicago White Sox in 1979, Herzog's last year in Kansas City. As he has built his own legacy in St. Louis, La Russa also has had to hear about the Herzog years here, but La Russa has an appreciation for that decade and, in fact, Herzog's whole career.

"He's had repeated success — with the Royals and with the Cardinals. It wasn't like he had a good year here and there," La Russa said.

"He was in championship series with both teams. What was he in, three World Series? That's the kind of stuff that earns you points.

"He had a very distinctive style — he was involved in the game with the way he handled the bullpen and the way his offense played. Whitey's clubs, on that turf here and in Kansas City ... he always had those guys trying to go for doubles and triples and it put a lot of pressure on the defense. He was really good.

"The guys who played for him all rave about him. What more do you want?"