Before the 1957 season, Gussie Busch told a Knights of Columbus banquet audience, “If the Cardinals don’t win the pennant this year or next, Frank Lane will be out on his ass.

Lane nearly pulled it off. During the winter he acquired Del Ennis, a right-handed power bat to balance the lineup, and pitcher Sam Jones, a two-time NL strikeout leader. The Cardinals charged into the pennant race in 1957, contending with the Dodgers and Braves until a nine-game losing streak in August brought them down. They finished second, the teams' highest finish since 1948, with an 87-67 record, an 11-victory improvement over 1956. Milwaukee, with Schoendienst at second base, won the pennant and the World Series 4-3 over the Yankees.

Lane’s acquisitions strengthened the team, but the key improvements came from holdover players. Stan Musial won his seventh batting title, and homegrown pitchers Larry Jackson and Lindy McDaniel each won 15 games. The Virdon trade left a hole in center field, so third baseman Boyer moved there, and his hitting suffered.

All was not well however in Cardinal nation. According to a Musial biographer, James N. Giglio, said Lane's upheaval destroyed morale and left the club "wracked by dissension."

Manager Fred Hutchinson steamed in his relationships with St. Louis GM Frank Lane, a loose cannon with the press, and hands-on team owner Gussie Busch. Something had to give, and it did in mid-July. This was a month before the National League pennant race fell apart under the sudden weight of the Milwaukee Braves' ten-game winning streak, and the Cardinals were still eagerly fighting for the league lead. Off to a slow start out of the gate, the Cardinals abruptly burst three games in front of the five-team National League dogfight for first place. But, just as quickly, the lead disappeared. Four straight losses on an eastern road trip dropped the Cards into second place. Then the blowup came. In a final series game at Brooklyn on July 18, the Cardinals rallied for seven runs in the ninth inning to take a 9-4 lead. With one run across and the bases full of Dodgers, Hutchinson grimly ignored accepted baseball practice when he left Wilmer Mizell, a lefthander, in the game against Gil Hodges, Brooklyn's right-handed power hitter. Hodges slammed a bases-loaded home run to tie up the game 9-9, and Brooklyn went on to win 10-9 in 11 innings.

St. Louis fans exploded with outrage. Irate calls flooded newspapers, radio stations and the Cardinal office. Many demanded a change "while there's still time." Hutchinson made his own plight worse by barring the clubhouse door to St. Louis writers. Frank Lane, a volatile critic, and enthusiastic second-guesser openly raged at his manager's judgment. Meyer, the vice-president, publicly called the game "pitiful, tragic and disastrous." He also scorched Hutchinson for resting Alvin Dark in the ninth inning "when you know that Dark is the glue that holds the infield together and keeps the pitchers on their toes." Wire services carried stories quoting Lane and Meyer, hinting club dissension, a Cardinal collapse, and the finish of Hutchinson.

None of this bothered Hutch except the public blasting he took from Meyer and Lane. A column by Al Abrams of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which discussed the executive criticism of the Cardinal manager, triggered one of baseball's most violent tempers. Hutchinson searched out Al Fleishman, of the Fleishman-Hillard public relations firm, which handles the Anheuser-Busch account. "How much of this can a man stand!" roared Hutchinson, hands raised, and fists clenched in controlled fury. "Get 'em all together before they wreck us!" Fleishman paled, then helped arrange the meeting in St. Louis.

Emmett Watson described it best. Four men gathered last month in Gussie Busch's plush office beneath the bright, clean, richly decorated grandstand of Busch Stadium. Three of the men were looking intently at the rock-hard face of Fred Hutchinson, a face that might have been hacked out by an angry sculptor with a dull chisel. Hutchinson, manager of the Cardinals, had called the three together.

The men who listened were August a. "Gussie" Busch Jr., Richard A. Meyer, the team's executive vice-president and a ranking lieutenant in Busch's beer and baseball combine, and General Manager Frank Lane, the stormy extrovert, a man of constant opinions, who seldom lowers his voice below a shout. These men are not accustomed to listening, but now they heard the manager out.

Hutchinson was quietly calling his bosses down on Gussie Busch's thick carpet. He spoke softly, so low that at times his words were almost inaudible. “You all want a pennant, and we can have it," he was saying. "We've got an outside chance. But I've got to be left alone to do my job. It's hard enough to fight the opposition on the field every day without answering to my own front office in the newspapers. Criticize me all you want. Second-guess me in private. I get paid to take that. But when your criticism hits every newspaper in the country, it can wreck the morale of this ball club. That's one thing we can't stand." The meeting lasted only 20 minutes. And Hutchinson, a man whose tantrums have shattered the furniture in a dozen clubhouses, was calm and forceful in the way he made his point: "Let me alone to do my job." Then he walked out of Gussie Busch's office and continued doing his job, which, despite an inexplicable midseason hitting slump that plunged his team into a nine-game losing streak, had kept the Cardinals 10-1 outsiders in spring handicaps, a persistent second in the wildest National League pennant race in decades.

Later in an interview, Stan Musial would say, ""Essentially, this team will stand or fall on its young players. Hutchinson is patient with them, knows how to use them. You'll never hear him taking credit. He never does that. But he brings out the best in us because everything's out on the table with him."

Hutchinson would reveal later in an interview.

"You have to love misery to do this. The important thing is not to panic. You have to grind, day after day, and forget about yesterday. The easiest thing to do is second-guess, but the worst thing to do is to second-guess yourself. Then you panic."

"The pitching—maybe I could take credit for that. That thing with Mizell in Brooklyn, I just wanted to get him over a hump. Sometimes that's all it takes—a man gets over a rough time and he goes on from there. Guys ask me about Von McDaniel. What did I do for him? I just put him in there and he came through. Could I take credit for that?"

"The big guy with us is Dark (Al). He's making a winner out of Blasingame. You don't see those things from the stands, but every day I see Blasingame get better because Dark is showing him how to win. Musial you don't have to manage. What can a manager do for him?"

"I try to make a ballplayer believe in himself, and the only way you can do that is to give him a chance. If he plays his way out of the lineup, then you try somebody else. And if you haven't got 'em, you're dead. I seldom read the newspapers. If we won, I know how. If we lost, reading about it won't get the game back."

Alvin Dark was interviewed shortly after the Brooklyn game, "I saw where the front office blasted him for taking me out of that game in Brooklyn," Dark said. He held up the forefinger of his throwing hand, which had a piece of tape glued over the nail. "I had this bad finger. It was the only time I ever asked to be taken out of a game in my life. So, he got blasted for taking me out. But he never once opened his mouth to explain. That's the kind of a man he is."

After two years, Gussie Busch still sounded vaguely bewildered when he discusses his manager. "He doesn't say much, and he's the kind of man who won't say anything he doesn't believe. I've found that out. Sometimes I think he's made mistakes in strategy, and I think the press rode him kind of hard about that Mizell incident in Brooklyn. Certainly, I disagreed with him. But Hutch has the courage of his convictions. I admire that."

Through it all, Fred Hutchinson was selected Sporting News Manager of the Year for 1957, for the teams' turn around.

Frank Lane, however, was becoming frustrated. Lane's philosophy was "You want me to operate the club? Okay, I'm going to operate it, but don't try to tell me what to do." But after two years and attempting to trade Stan Musial and Ken Boyer and completing trades involving Red Schoendienst and 1955 Rookie of the Year, Bill Virdon, Lane found out that with Gussie Busch it wasn't going to work that way. Gussie demanded the Lane clear all deals with Dick Meyer first who would then run it by Mr. Busch for final approval. Lane had to communicate with the owner through several intermediaries, vice presidents of the brewery, and he was too impatient for the protocols of corporate politics. This was reinforced to Lane at a game one evening in St. Louis by Dick Meyer with Lane's assistant Bing Devine in attendance, where Lane was talking of a deal, we wanted to make. Meyer said to Lane, "If you want to make a deal, okay. We hired you to run the club, however Mr. Busch does not like to hear about these deals after the fact. I'd like to go back and talk to Mr. Busch in the morning, and I'll call you back after I see him and, in all probability, he will okay the deal." At 7am the next morning, Bing Devine’s phone was ringing, it was Dick Meyer. "You heard the conversation I had with Frank last night, what was the last thing I said to him?" Devine repeated what Meyer had told Lane. Meyer then said, "Well you better turn on your radio because the deal had gone down. Lane did that sort of thing and Meyer didn't like it and Gussie Busch for sure didn't like it. The writing was on the wall for Lane, this was not going to work. It was time for him to go.

Additionally, Lane had asked Busch to extend his contract beyond 1958. Busch refused. Frank Lane resigned in November 1957, with a year remaining on his contract, and moved on to Cleveland to became general manager of the Indians.

Ironically, Frank Lane was voted The Major League Baseball Executive of the Year for 1957, an award given annually by The Sporting News.

Bing Devine was promoted to Cardinals General Manager in November 1957. Devine had been associated with the Cardinals in one capacity or another since 1938. After a "hitch" in the Navy from 1943-1945, Devine returned to the Cardinals’ organization, spending two seasons running the club in Columbus, Georgia (Single-A South Atlantic League), and seven more in Rochester, New York (Triple-A International League). In Rochester Devine worked not only with many future major-league players, but also with managers Johnny Keane and Harry Walker, both future big-league managers with whom Devine would remain close. After a successful run in Rochester, including two league championships, Devine was promoted to the Cardinals in 1956 as general manager Frank Lane’s assistant.

On December 5, 1957 in Devine's first trade, he traded pitcher Marty Kutyna, pitcher Willard Schmidt and pitcher Ted Wieand to the Cincinnati Redlegs for third baseman/outfielder Curt Flood and outfielder Joe Taylor. This would turn out to be one of his best trades, probably ranking second only to the Broglio/Brock trade in 1964.

Season Highlights:

June 12 Stan Musial played in his 823rd consecutive National League game for the St. Louis Cardinals breaking Gus Suhr's previously held record. Musial played in 895 consecutive games from April 15, 1952 to August 22, 1957.

Stan Musial, Larry Jackson, Wally Moon and Hal Smith were named to the National League All-Star team.

Stan Musial wins his 7th and final National League batting title with a .351 batting average.

Fred Hutchinson named the Sporting News Manager of the Year.