BOSTON -- Former major league manager Whitey Herzog won't be joining the Boston Red Sox as a bench coach after all.

"Whitey's indicated to us that he's not going to be joining the Red Sox," general manager Dan Duquette said Saturday.

The Red Sox sought the former St. Louis and Kansas City manager to work alongside their manager Joe Kerrigan.

"The more I thought about it, it wouldn't be fair to Joe Kerrigan for me to be a bench coach," the 70-year-old Herzog told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

"Every time we'd lose three or four in a row, the Boston press was going to say (Kerrigan) is going to get fired and I'm going to take over. I just didn't want to get into that.

"I love Boston. The lobster is great. But I'm not going."

Kerrigan recently met for five hours with Herzog and encouraged him to join the staff. Herzog mulled the offer while on vacation. He returned from a ski trip this week.

Herzog, 70, was offered the manager's job in Boston before Jimy Williams was hired before the 1997 season.

Williams was fired in August in the heat of a pennant race and replaced by Kerrigan, who had never managed in pro baseball. Boston went 17-26 under the former pitching coach and fell out of the playoff hunt.