How Stan Musial Picked Up the Nickname ‘Stan the Man’

Stan the Man remains a legend in St. Louis and throughout Cardinal nation. (Photograph by Glen Sparks.)

 

Almost exactly five years after Stan Musial made his major-league debut, St. Louis Post-Dispatch sportswriter Bob Broeg wrote an article that forever transformed Musial into Stan the Man. Published on September 20, 1946, the article referred to comments made by Brooklyn Dodgers fans and heard by Broeg and St. Louis Cardinals traveling secretary Leo Ward during a series in Brooklyn the week before.1 Brooklyn fans named Musial “The Man” in 1946, even before he reached his peak at Ebbets Field in 1948-49, when he creamed Dodgers pitching to the tune of an incredible .522 batting average and 1.067 slugging average.2

The Cardinals and Dodgers waged a battle for supremacy in the National League in the 1940s. The Dodgers nosed out the Cardinals in 1941, and the Cardinals returned the favor in 1942. After an interruption caused by World War II, the teams resumed their battle in 1946. Musial, who had spent the 1945 season in the US Navy, returned in 1946 and quickly asserted himself as the best player in the NL and a thorn in Brooklyn’s side.

In eight games at Ebbets Field in 1946 prior to September, Musial hit .419 and slugged .548 to help the Cardinals win five of the games. As St. Louis headed into Brooklyn for the final scheduled series of the season, on September 12-14, the Cardinals held a slim 1½-game lead over the second-place Dodgers.

On Thursday, September 12, a crowd of 32,643 showed up at Ebbets Field to see the Dodgers’ Kirby Higbe oppose Cardinals hurler Howard Pollet.3 Higbe got two quick outs in the top of the first, but Musial, batting third, doubled off the right-field wall. This was followed by a walk to Enos Slaughter, Whitey Kurowski’s infield hit, Dick Sisler’s line single to right that drove in two runs, and a three-run homer by rookie Joe Garagiola, staking the Cardinals to a 5-0 lead.

The Dodgers got two runs back in the second, but after Musial led off the third with an unsuccessful attempt to bunt for a hit, the Cardinals scored a run and knocked Higbe out of the game. Musial popped out to shortstop in the fourth and walloped a second double to right field in the seventh. The score remained 6-2 into the eighth, when the Cardinals put the game away with four more runs. Musial drove in one of them with a single to right for his third hit of the game, and scored another on a hit by Kurowski. The Cardinals won 10-2. Musial was 3-for-5 with two doubles, two runs scored, and an RBI.

With the Dodgers falling to 2½ back, only 22,549 (21,935 paid) came to see game two of the series on Friday the 13th. Brooklyn sent southpaw Joe Hatten to the mound to oppose the Cardinals’ Red Munger. The crowd saw the Dodgers turn the tables on the Cardinals. After St. Louis went down in order in the top of the first, the Dodgers scored four times, knocking out Munger after two-thirds of an inning. With the Dodgers ahead 4-0, Cardinals relievers Alpha Brazle, Ted Wilks, and Ken Burkhart held Brooklyn scoreless for the next 7⅓ innings as the Dodgers clung desperately to their lead. The Cardinals scored a run in the fourth but should have scored more. Musial tripled off the right-field scoreboard to lead off the inning. He was thrown out at the plate on Slaughter’s short fly ball to center field when he mistakenly thought third-base coach Mike Gonzales was saying, “Go, go, go!” instead of “No, no, no!”

Terry Moore doubled with one out in the fifth. The nervous Brooklyn fans swallowed hard as they saw Musial advancing to the plate. He already had four hits in the first 13 innings of the series, including two doubles and a triple. Musial drove Moore home with yet another double to right field to make the score 4-2. It was still 4-2 as the Cardinals came to bat in the seventh. Musial led off the inning by belting a long drive to left field that was caught by Dick Whitman. By the ninth inning the Dodgers’ lead was down to one run at 4-3. With one out, Moore drew a walk to put the tying run on base. Who was coming to the plate, batting .369 and holding a lock on the NL MVP? It was Musial again. The fans held their collective breath as Musial launched one to deep right-center. They breathed a sigh of relief as Dixie Walker hauled it in. Higbe, a goat the day before, came on in relief in the seventh inning and finished the game. On Saturday, September 14, Musial turned in an ordinary 1-for-4 as the Dodgers shut out the Cardinals, 5-0, to pull within one-half game of St. Louis.

After the Cardinals-Dodgers series, Broeg asked Leo Ward what the Dodgers fans were saying when Musial came to the plate. Broeg thought he heard, “Here comes that man.” But Ward corrected him, indicating that the fans were uttering with trepidation, “Here comes the man.”4 On September 20, 1946, precisely five years and three days after Musial’s debut, Broeg wrote an article in the Post-Dispatch lauding Musial for leading the Cardinals to a 5-4 win over the Braves one day earlier. Musial had contributed five hits to the cause, including two doubles. Broeg started the article by crediting Dodgers fans with bestowing a new nickname on Musial:

“It took the baseball-batty borough of Brooklyn … to supply with begrudging respect the best nickname yet bestowed upon Stanley Frank Musial. To Brooklyn’s fanatical baseball followers, Musial is simply ‘The Man.’

In the recent series at Flatbush … the appearance at the plate of the Cardinals’ apple-cheeked first baseman frequently brought from several sections of the Ebbets Field stands a distinct: ‘O-O-h, here comes The Man, again.’

Not that man, but THE man. And the nickname so aptly applied to a self-effacing player … summarized the around-the-league regard for Musial, unquestionably THE man in the Redbirds’ race to the wire against the Dodgers.”5

And there it was. But would it catch on? The Brooklyn Daily Eagle ran Broeg’s article in its sports section the same day. But in the battle for newspaper supremacy in St. Louis among the Post-Dispatch, its archrival the Globe-Democrat, and the Star-Times, would the other papers adopt the nickname that Broeg proposed? On September 21, the Post-Dispatch repeated Broeg’s nickname, stating, “When it comes to naming the Cards’ most valuable player, it should not be hard to name ‘The Man.’”6

At the same time, Joe Trimble of the New York Daily News was trying to hang a different moniker on Musial. Three times between September 16 and 21, Trimble referred to him as “Musial the Menace.”7 It didn’t catch on.

Back in St. Louis, on September 27, Sid Keener of the St. Louis Star-Times wrote a column with a section heading that read “Musial’s The Man.” However, rather than refer to Musial as “The Man” in the article, Keener twice referred to him as “Mr. Base-Hit,” another moniker that didn’t stick.8 On September 29 Broeg wrote a feature article on Musial that included the following: “Now, however, The Man, as Brooklyn’s rabid followers respectfully nicknamed Musial, expects to be with the Cardinals for years.”9 On September 30 the Star-Times, referring to Musial as ‘Stanley Frank Musial, The Man among men,” began to bow to the inevitable.10

But how did the nickname go from “The Man” to “Stan the Man?” Broeg had a simple explanation. Noting that admiring Brooklyn fans had dubbed Musial “The Man,” Broeg stated “You didn’t have to be a brain scientist to make it “Stan the Man.”11

In October The Sporting News reported, “They’re now calling Stan Musial, 1946 National League batting champion, The Man.”12 After the Cardinals were crowned World Series champions, the nickname followed Musial into the barnstorming season. In late October the Kansas City Royals, an African American team featuring Satchel Paige, faced off against the Bobby Feller All-Stars, a team promoted as including “Stan (The Man) Musial.”13 On November 22 Musial was named the NL’s Most Valuable Player. The Post-Dispatch announcement included a drawing of Musial by Post-Dispatch artist Amadee Wohlschlaeger, captioned “Stan The Man Musial.”14 The Star-Times also appeared to be on board, referring to the new MVP as “Stanley Frank Musial, The Man.”15

Despite Burnes’s denial and Keener’s guile, the record should show that “Stan the Man” was originated by Dodgers fans and popularized by Bob Broeg.

RICK ZUCKER is a retired regulatory attorney. He grew up and lives in the city where Stan Musial was, is, and always will be the gold standard. Rick played D3 baseball for Washington University in St. Louis, in the pre-NIL days. He is active in the Bob Broeg SABR Chapter and served as president from 2018 to 2022. He is proud to have won the chapter’s Rygelski Research Conference award in 2017. He created a poster for the SABR 51 convention in Chicago with the help of his daughter, Samantha, a crackerjack graphic design artist.

 

SOURCES

Thanks to Bob Tiemann for his helpful insight.

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted Baseball-reference.com.

 

NOTES

1 Bob Broeg, “Musial (The Man) Gives Boston Fans an Eyeful; Birds Play Cubs Next,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 20, 1946: 2E.

2 Bob Broeg and Jerry Vickery, St. Louis Cardinals Encyclopedia (Lincolnwood, Illinois: Contemporary Books, 1998), 260; Robert L. Tiemann, “At the Top of His Game – Stan Musial at Ebbets Field – 1948 & 1949,” presented at a Bob Broeg St. Louis SABR Chapter Meeting, May 16, 2022.

3 The paid attendance was 31,303.

4 James N. Giglio, Musial – From Stash to Stan the Man (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001), 136-37.

5 Bob Broeg, “Musial (The Man) Gives Boston Fans an Eyeful; Birds Play Cubs Next.”

6 “Wray’s Column – ‘From Greenland’s Icy Mountains,’ Etc.,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 21, 1946: 6.

7 Joe Trimble, “Cardinals Sweep Giants, 3-0, 7-4; Increase Lead,” New York Daily News, September 16, 1946: C17; Joe Trimble, “Cards Win in Ninth, 5-4, on Musial’s 5th Hit,” New York Daily News, September 20, 1946: 71, 74; Joe Trimble, “Slats OK for Cub Series; Card Flag Hopes Buoyed,” New York Daily News, September 21, 1946: C17.

8 Sid Keener, untitled column, St. Louis Star-Times, September 27, 1946: 24.

9 Bob Broeg, “Musial No Big Silent Hero,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 29, 1946: 1H.

10 W. Vernon Tietjen, “Pollet or Dickson to Open Here Tomorrow; Year’s Top Crowd Sees Cubs Tame Birds,” St. Louis Star-Times, September 30, 1946: 20.

11 Bob Broeg and Jerry Vickery, St. Louis Cardinals Encyclopedia, 260.

12 Fred Lieb, “Stan Musial, National League batting Champion,” The Sporting News, October 9, 1946: 25.

13 “Feller All-Stars to Play Kansas City Nine Tonight,” Bakersfield Californian, October 23, 1946: 15. Paige’s team was sometimes dubbed the Monarchs, but in California newspaper advertisements was listed as the Royals.

14 “Our Man Stan,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 22, 1946: 2E.

15 W. Vernon Tietjen, “Cards’ First Basemen Polls 319 Votes in Winning Award for Second Time in 4 Years,” St. Louis Star-Times, November 22, 1946: 24.

16 Franz Wippold, “Musial and Breadon Confer, Reach No Agreement for 1947,” St. Louis Star-Times, December 19, 1946: 28.

17 Sid Keener, untitled column, St. Louis Star-Times, December 20, 1946: 24.