A season without Stan!
Bob Costas, one of the great commentators of all of American sports, said in his eulogy of St. Louis Cardinals great Stan Musial, that he did not hit a home run in his last game, he hit a single. This was a reference to what the hard drinking and carousing Yankee great Babe Ruth had done in his last at bat. Costas went on to say that Musial hadn’t hit in fifty six straight games. He had simply stayed married to the same woman for over seventy years. This was a reference to what the multiple married Joe DiMaggio had done in addition to his consecutive hit streak, among his wives being Marilyn Monroe. And someone else has mentioned that back in the 1940’s when integration came to baseball with all of its ugliness by so many white players against the blacks who broke that barrier, chief among them Jackie Robinson, that Stan Musial simply set quietly on the sidelines and respected those who were giving so much of themselves to advance the game of baseball.
Baseball was Stan Musial’s life but his life was so much more than baseball. It some ways, his quiet but consistent approach to life and the game that he loved placed him almost in a class by himself. The greatest team in baseball--the New York Yankees--had their Babe Ruth’s, their Joe Dimaggio’s, and their Lou Gerhigs, and the Cardinals have Stan Musial, who might, considering playing ability and over all character, just stand above them all!
There is no question that Musial is one of the top five ballplayers to ever participate in what has been called the national past time. His over 3500 hits have placed him in that category. In addition to that fact, Musial hit the same number of balls on the road as he did at the old Sportsman’s park in St. Louis. There have been players who have hit for bigger numbers that Musial, but never for more consistency. Musial spent his entire career playing for the St. Louis Cardinals, something seldom seen in this age of big salaries and free agency. There was another player who might have eclipsed Musial if he had stayed a Cardinal. However Albert Pujols chose to take the big bucks and flee to the west coast. But there was more to it than that. When Stan Musial saw his long career begin to decline, he decided to retire rather than play the game for money that he knew that he could not justify. Pujols has long been rumored to be several years older than he claims to be and that dishonest bolstered by his already declining numbers in his supposed early thirties leaves Musial’s position with St. Louis unassailed.
Stan Musial played twenty two years with the Cardinals and appeared in twenty four all star games, a record shared by Willie Mays. The reason that Musial played in more all star games than in seasons played was because they used to play two all star games per year. They don’t do that any more. It was just over a year ago, back in 2011, that Stan Musial visited the White House where he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by president Obama. Most ball players never get that kind of honor, particularly in this age of steroids where so many of their records are tainted by their quest for fame and, most particularly, money. Stan Musial played in the age before free agency came into being where a ball club owned a player and could practically dictate what his salary might be. In his last season in 1963, Musial played with a black ball player named Curt Flood who would later go on to break the bank and bring free agency into being across American sports. If Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball, Curt Flood broke the money barrier.
At the beginning of Stan Musial’s baseball career, he played in the minor leagues for as little as sixteen dollars a week, a far cry from the several hundred thousands that minor leaguers get before coming to the big leagues where their minimum pay is over a half million dollars a year. Musial made around 100,000 dollars at the heights of his playing career.
The stories about Stan Musial and his kindnesses go on and on and they will be told and retold again this afternoon when his team honors his memory at the one hundred and twenty first home opener for the Cardinals, one of the oldest franchises in major league baseball. The Cardinals will wear a patch on their uniforms commemorating Musial for the entire season but stories about “Stan the man” will be told as long as baseball is played in St Louis, or even remembered there.
In so many ways, Musial, among the ghosts of baseball, will take the field with his team today and if one sees a particularly good play in center field or at first base where he played, or a particularly notable hit, one might know that Stan was there to give a little nudge along the way.
If you get the chance to visit Cooperstown, New York, go during the summer when baseball is played. It is the home of the Baseball Hall Of Fame. Stan Musial is there with all the rest of the truly great ones. He was elected in 1969 on the first ballot by the sports writers with ninety three percent of the eligible votes. It is interesting to note that Stan Musial always played “Take me out to the Ballgame” on his harmonica at the induction ceremonies held there every summer. This writer began to follow the Cardinals two weeks before Musial retired and it is a testament to the magnitude of his life that, almost fifty years later, he is still held in such high regard by all of us who follow baseball and its still developing saga.
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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