Stan ‘The Man’ Musial, a true Cardinal legend
By the time I was walking and talking, I remember my father being huddled next to the radio listening to the St. Louis Cardinals’ baseball games, and I huddled with him. I was 8 years old before I got to attend a Cardinal game, but by that time Stan “The Man” Musial was the baseball player I looked up to most for his talent and winning personality, and most wanted to be like.
I respected—but greatly disliked—the Brooklyn Dodgers and their fans, but appreciated them for giving Musial his nickname, “The Man.” I can’t imagine any one more appropriate. Dodger fans apparently respected him, much as I did the Dodger slugger, Duke Snider, because both men were dangerous hitters. And after seeing what a great hitter Musial was, they reportedly started chanting, “Here comes the man again,” when he came to bat. That was in 1946 at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field. As the story goes, Bob Broeg, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer, heard it and included it in his column, and Musial became “The Man.”
Stan Musial commemorative with signed baseball
At recess in the one-room school I attended for six years in southern Illinois, we played softball until the snow fell in the fall and could hardly wait for spring to come so we could choose up sides and play ball again. Even though I was righthanded, I moved over to the first-base side of the plate at bat, crouched in what I thought was Stan’s corkscrew stance, waved the bat and struck out until I began to feel comfortable batting lefthanded and always did from then on. I even tried to learn to throw with my left hand, but never got so I was comfortable with that.
During the summer of 1954 in a game with the New York Giants, Musial smashed five home runs in a double header. I listened to every inning, jumped and hollered out in the road in front of our house with some of the neighbors. I don’t remember whether it was the newspaper or whether it was Cardinal announcer Harry Caray, who seemed to like Musial as much as I did, or one of his sidekicks, Jack Buck or Milo Hamilton, who told the story of Musial going home after that Giants double header and his son, Dick, saying, “They must have been serving up some fat ones today, Dad.”
But it didn’t necessarily take a fat one for “The Man” to hit it. My high school history teacher was a Marine veteran of the Korean War and told a story about Marine Corps pilot and Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams coming aboard ship after the fighting had stopped, talking to the troops, and asking one Marine (who apparently didn’t recognize Williams) who was the best hitter in baseball.
“Stan Musial,” the young Marine replied quickly.
Williams laughed and said, “He must have better eyes than I have.”
As I remember, Williams went on to say it had helped him with hitting that he could tell what the ball was going to do when it got 30 feet from the plate, but Musial apparently had said he could tell what it was going to be when it was 15 feet from the pitcher’s hand.
And I vividly remember heading down to St. Louis with some buddies during a tight pennant race with the Dodgers in the fall of ’63, and seeing Musial hit the last home run of his career (No. 475) in a shot over the right field fence, tying that first game at 1-1 in the seventh inning. But relievers Bobby Shantz and Ron Taylor couldn’t hold the Dodgers and gave up two runs in the top of the ninth for a 3-1 loss.
In my mind’s eye, I can still see Musial swing on the pitch for that home run, and watch him curl around as the ball flies over the right field wall of the old Sportsman’s Park and out onto Grand Avenue. But in reality, I don’t think it actually went out of Sportsman’s Park that night, as it did sometimes.
Musial was 43 years old when he retired, but he always was around for years until he died at 92 in 2013. When the Cubs traded Lou Brock to the Cardinals for Ernie Broglio, the Cardinals pitcher in the last game Musial homered, Brock reportedly went up to Musial and asked for tips on hitting, thinking he’d get some insights from the great hitter.
Musial laughed and said, “Wait until you get a fat one and then hit the s*#t out of it.”
He was a great hitter and a St. Louis Cardinals legend I still admire. He was said to have never argued with umpires, who said if Musial turned to look at them questioning a called strike, they figured they must have gotten it wrong. Even as I write these words, he’s up on the wall behind my shoulder, looking for a fat one with a signed baseball just below him.