April 16, 1957: Stan Musial is a perfect 4-for-4 on Opening Day for Cardinals

Stan Musial entered the 1957 season with something to prove.

Although the three-time National League MVP and six-time batting champion had already cemented his case for the Hall of Fame, Musial began his 16th big-league campaign fighting the perception that his best years were behind him. The 36-year-old had not won an MVP award since 1948 or a batting title since 1952, as sportswriter George Bugbee noted in an April 15, 1957, column. “There is little grounds for hope,” Bugbee wrote, “that he can erase the handwriting—that he can ever recapture in full the magic that was in his days of an enchanted youth.”1

Musial put that narrative to rest pretty quickly on Opening Day.

With a vintage 4-for-4 performance on April 16, 1957, Musial powered the Cardinals to a 13-4 victory over the Cincinnati Redlegs and set the tone for the last truly great season of his career, one in which he would capture his seventh and final NL batting title and finish as the runner-up to Hank Aaron for MVP. In front of an opposing crowd of more than 32,000 fans at Crosley Field, he doubled twice to tie Charlie Gehringer for seventh in two-base hits on the all-time major-league list. Also, by appearing in his 775th consecutive game, Musial inched even closer to the NL record of 822 set by Gus Suhr two decades earlier – a mark he passed later in the season.

The 1957 opener carried much broader implications beyond Musial. Both St. Louis and Cincinnati entered the season with legitimate pennant aspirations, even though neither franchise had appeared in a World Series since the previous decade. The Cardinals, led by fiery manager Fred Hutchinson, had finished just shy of .500 in 1956 but beefed up their lineup during the off-season with the addition of power-hitting outfielder Del Ennis. Twenty-five-year-old Ken Boyer, a reigning NL All-Star, also returned as the team’s starting third baseman. “With the line-up we have, we might go as high as second place – if the pitching steps up,” Musial said before the season. “I think our [overall] hitting balance is probably the best since the time of Cooper, Kurowski and Slaughter.”2

Cincinnati had even higher hopes. After suffering through 11 consecutive losing seasons, the Redlegs (the team’s official nickname from 1953 to 1958 during the “Red Scare”) took the National League by storm in 1956 with a 91-63 record. Fueled by NL Manager of the Year Birdie Tebbetts and Rookie of the Year outfielder Frank Robinson, Cincinnati finished just two games out of first place in ’56 and clearly had the talent to compete for a pennant in ’57.

Before Opening Day, the Cincinnati Enquirer summed up the city’s collective optimism with the following poem:

Twas the day before opening and all over town
The fans’ hopes were up, not soon to come down.
Well known were the problems, yet heard was the brag
That this year the Redlegs would capture the flag …
THEN BRING ON THE YANKS.3 

As first pitch approached on the afternoon of April 16, the crowd brought similar energy to Crosley Field. After a morning rainfall and lavish pregame ceremonies, as many as 3,000 fans jammed a set of temporary bleachers extending from the left-field foul line all the way past center. “The boisterous burghers,” Bob Broeg of the St. Louis Post Dispatch observed, were practically “spilling onto the left and centerfield lawn.”4 The special accommodation for the fans intruded the playing surface by nearly 50 feet, a welcome move for the hitters on both teams though not so much for the pitchers.5

On the mound, the Redlegs started Johnny Klippstein against the Cardinals’ Herm Wehmeier – an unremarkable Opening Day pitching matchup with few exciting storylines other than the fact that Wehmeier was a Cincinnati native competing against his hometown team. The serviceable 30-year-old righty, a former star athlete at Cincinnati’s Western Hills High School, had previously played parts of nine seasons for the Reds from 1945 to 1954 before joining the Phillies in midseason in 1954 and then the Cardinals in 1956. Despite having a huge contingent of family and friends rooting for him in the Crosley Field bleachers, Wehmeier downplayed the matchup. “Merely another game,” he said. “That’s what it was.”6

In the top of the first, Klippstein retired Cardinals leadoff hitter Don Blasingame but yielded a double to Alvin Dark, bringing Musial to the plate with a runner in scoring position. As he strolled to the batter’s box for his first at-bat of the 1957 season, Musial loosened his trademark crouched batting stance a bit – a technique he experimented with during spring training when he hit at nearly a .400 clip. “I believe I am concentrating a little more than last year,” Musial had said in March. “I certainly do feel good at the plate this year.”7

It showed.

Facing Klippstein with a runner on second, Musial whacked a double off the fence in right field to score Dark for the season’s first run. After putting the Cardinals on the board with a 1-0 lead, Musial drew a walk in the third inning and raced to third on an RBI double by cleanup hitter Del Ennis, although he did not advance any farther. In the bottom of the fourth, Redlegs catcher  Ed Bailey’s two-run single tied the score at 2-2 before the Cardinals sent up the top of their lineup in the fifth. With one out and a runner on first, Musial smoked another double to right, tying Gehringer’s all-time doubles mark at 5748 and setting up an RBI groundout by Ennis in the next at-bat. Given a 3-2 lead to protect, Wehmeier proceeded to pitch a fifth scoreless inning in the bottom of the frame. 

The Cardinals broke open the game in the top of the sixth by exploding for five runs on six hits. After catcher Hal Smith knocked Klippstein out of the contest with an RBI single, rookie center fielder Bobby Gene Smith blasted a two-run homer to center for the first hit of his career. Four batters later, Musial came to bat again and pulled the ball to right for a single – his third hit of the day – scoring Blasingame to extend the lead to five runs. Another RBI groundout by Ennis made the score 8-2 in favor of St. Louis.

Wehmeier helped himself at the plate with a sacrifice fly in the seventh, before the Cardinals added four more runs in the top of the eighth. In his final at-bat of the afternoon, Musial completed his perfect 4-for-4 day by singling and scoring on a homer by outfielder Wally Moon. For his part, Wehmeier pitched a complete game, yielding four runs and eight hits to pick up the victory against his hometown team.

With a 13-4 win, the Cardinals dealt the Redlegs their worst Opening Day loss since 1911.9 “We got the hell knocked out of us,” manager Birdie Tebbetts said. “That’s right, the hell knocked out of us. H-e-l-l.”10 Over in the St. Louis clubhouse, Musial celebrated his 4-for-4 performance with teammates by sipping a cold bottle of beer. “I can’t recall,” Musial said, “when I’ve had a better Opening Day.”11 The 13-time All-Star had put the rest of the National League on notice. “I’m going to bear down on that batting title,” Musial vowed after the game.12

After his stellar 1957 debut in Cincinnati, Musial batted an astounding .476 throughout the rest of April and never looked back. By the end of the season, he led the much-improved Cardinals to a second-place finish and captured the final batting title of his career with a mark of .351 – 18 points higher than runner-up Willie Mays and nearly 30 points higher than Cincinnati’s Frank Robinson.

So much for Stan Musial losing his magic.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author used Baseball Reference for more information on the April 16, 1957, contest as well as Musial’s career as a whole.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CIN/CIN195704160.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1957/B04160CIN1957.htm

Photo credit: Stan Musial, SABR-Rucker Archive.

Notes

1 George Bugbee, “Lane Takes Critical Look at Musial, Sees an All-Time Titan,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, April 15, 1957: 18.

2 Jack Herman, “Cards Vets Report, Musial in High Spirits,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, March 1, 1957: 1C.

3 Richard Emerson Macke, “Twas the Day Before Opening,” Cincinnati Enquirer, April 15, 1957: 46.

4 Bob Broeg, “Boy Named Smith and The Man Pace Cards’ Romp,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 17, 1957: 1C.

5 Broeg.

6 Dick Forbes, “Hermie Relaxed, Musial Content After Inaugural,” Cincinnati Enquirer, April 17, 1957: 25.

7 J. Roy Stockton, “Cheney’s Curve and the New Musial Give Cards Spring Lilt,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 29, 1957: 4B.

8 With 725 doubles by the end of his career, Musial as of 2024 ranked third on the all-time list. https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/2B_career.shtml. 

9 Jack Herman, “Musial Gets 4-4 in 13-4 Cards’ Romp,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 17, 1957: 1C.

10 Bill Ford, “Klippstein Clouted as Control Lacks,” Cincinnati Enquirer, April 17, 1957: 27.

11 Forbes.

12 Bob Pille, “At 36, Stan Rolls On,” Cincinnati Post, April 17, 1957: 33.