August 15, 1943: Stan Musial hits 2 home runs, drives in 5 runs against Dodgers

On August 15, 1943, Stan Musial was not yet The Man. That would come later.

Even so, the 22-year-old already had established himself as one of the game’s bright stars. He was now in his second full big-league season. The Cardinals promoted him to the majors in mid-September 1941, and he hit .426 in 47 at-bats. Chicago Cubs manager Jimmie Wilson watched the lefty batter go 6-for-10 and make some impressive defensive plays in a doubleheader at Sportsman’s Park. He decided, “Nobody can be that good.”1

The following year, Musial hit .315 with a .397 on-base percentage and a .490 slugging percentage. The Cardinals won the National League pennant and beat the New York Yankees in the World Series. Musial finished 12th in the NL Most Valuable Player voting.

The precocious outfielder briefly held out in the spring of 1943. From his home in Donora, Pennsylvania, he asked Cardinals owner Sam Breadon for a $10,000 contract, a raise from $4,250 in 1942. Later, he amended that request to $7,500. Breadon, though, was offering just a $1,000 pay bump from the previous season and refused to budge. He wanted Musial to sign a contract in St. Louis. “And,” Breadon wrote, “if you do not sign a contract and want to stay out of baseball in 1943, we will pay your round-trip expenses” back to Donora.2

Musial thought about it, and “I knew that once I sat across from that square-jawed, white-haired Irishman whose blue eyes could warm you or chill you, I’d succumb.”3 Musial reported to Cairo, Illinois, about 150 miles from downtown St. Louis, where the team was training as World War II raged. Breadon had acknowledged in one of his letters that Musial was a “good player” who had the chance to be a “great player.”4

In the high summer of 1943, Breadon’s prediction looked solid. Musial’s batting average stood at .354 through August 14, with a .554 slugging percentage. He had just knocked New York Giants pitching around, going 10-for-17 over a four-game series at the Polo Grounds.

From upper Manhattan, the Cardinals took the short trip to Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. The Cardinals were 69-34 and in first place by 14 games over the Cincinnati Reds. The Dodgers sat in fourth place with a mark of 54-53, 17 games behind St. Louis.

The starting pitchers for the opener of this Sunday doubleheader were Max Lanier of the Cardinals and Curt Davis of the Dodgers. The 27-year-old Lanier had an 8-5 won-lost record, a 2.08 ERA, and a tender left elbow.

Davis, a 39-year-old right-hander, was 6-7 with a 3.24 ERA. A former top pitcher with the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League, Davis was on his fourth big-league team and had made two All-Star squads, including in 1939 when he won 22 games for the Cardinals. Brooklyn acquired Davis, along with slugger Ducky Medwick, on June 12, 1940, for four Dodgers and $125,000 cash. 

Several fans who filed into Ebbets Field brought pointed signs directed at team president Branch Rickey, the former Cardinals executive known to some by the pejorative nickname of El Cheapo. Donald H. Dreese wrote how “irate Flatbushers,” upset about the recent sale of players such as Dolph Camilli, “have drawn and quartered the mental effigy Prexy Branch Rickey because of his recent Brooklyn players manipulations.”  Placards asked, “Why don’t you cut your own salary?” or  insisted, “We know you’re going to collect your share from St. Louis when you go back to them.”5

Amid the hubbub, Brooklyn took an early 1-0 lead. Frenchy Bordagaray led off the bottom of the first inning with a base hit but was forced at second by Arky Vaughan. Luis Olmo, from Arecibo, Puerto Rico, reached first base on an error and Vaughan scooted to second. Billy Herman singled the run home.

Ray Sanders hit a two-out solo home run for St. Louis in the top of the second inning. Johnny Hopp’s triple kept the rally going; Marty Marion walked and stole second. Lanier then lifted a lazy fly to right field.

After the Dodgers went down one-two-three in the bottom of the second, St. Louis struck again in the third inning. Lou Klein singled and came home on Harry Walker’s triple. That brought up Musial, who had flied out in his first at-bat. This time around, he belted a two-run homer into the center-field bleachers. It was just the second home run hit to that spot at Ebbets Field in 1943.6

Musial had recently switched from a 35-ounce bat to a 34½-ounce model “to get more speed into my swing.” He also had moved his hands farther down on the bat handle. “This increased the power of my drive,” he explained. Musial added, “I figure that these changes – along with a bit more confidence this season – helped my batting a lot.”7 Thus far in August, he was hitting .512 (22-for-43) with a .791 slugging percentage.

Following Musial’s homer, the next three Cardinals hitters made outs. Brooklyn got back one run in the fourth. Herman led off with a walk and was forced out on an Augie Galan groundball. Gene Hermanski followed with an RBI double.

Both starting pitchers cruised along over the next few innings. The game took a final tilt the Cardinals’ way in the seventh. Lanier hit a one-out single but was erased when Klein hit into a force play. Walker singled, and the Cardinals had runners at first and second with Musial, “the league’s top slugger,”8 stepping to the plate. In his previous at-bat, in the fifth inning, he lined out,

Musial unraveled from his famous corkscrew batting stance and belted a three-run homer, giving him five RBIs in the game and 10 home runs for the season. It was the fourth time in Musial’s young career that he had homered twice in one game, the second time against the Dodgers. St. Louis now led 7-2.

The Cardinals added two more runs in the eighth inning, with lefty Max Macon now pitching for the Dodgers. Macon, a one-time top prospect in the Cardinals organization, got into trouble right away. He allowed a leadoff single to Whitey Kurowski before Sanders homered again.

Hopp flied out, while Marion walked and made it to second base on Lanier’s sacrifice. Klein, enjoying a solid season as a 24-year-old rookie second baseman (a .283 batting average entering the game and a .346 on-base percentage), hit an RBI double. Walker flied out to end the frame.

Brooklyn scored its final run in the eighth inning. Olmo hit a one-out single and, after Herman flied out, Galan reached on a fielder’s choice, Olmo taking second. Hermanski’s single drove Olmo home.

St. Louis scored again in the ninth. Musial led off with a single and took off for second base on a passed ball with Walker Cooper at bat. Cooper doubled Musial home but was out trying to stretch the hit into a triple. Kurowski flied out and Sanders struck out.

Lanier retired the Dodgers in order in the bottom of the ninth. Al Glossop popped out and Mickey Owen, pinch-hitting for Macon, struck out. Bordagaray’s fly out to Hopp in left field ended the game at 11-3, St. Louis.

A reporter asked Musial about his big day. The ballplayer offered a surprising response. “Homers are all right,” he told the Star and Times. “I’ll certainly never refuse them, but I like triples better. Triples are almost as effective as homers, and they give you a chance to run. I like to run.”9

Brooklyn won the second half of the doubleheader, 4-3, in 10 innings. Musial went 0-for-4 with a walk. The Cardinals ended the day at 70-35, 13 games in front of the Reds in the National League pennant race. The Dodgers were now 55-54, still stuck in fourth place.

Musial completed the 1943 campaign with an NL-leading .357 batting average. He also topped the circuit in hits (220), on-base percentage (.425), slugging percentage (.562), and several other categories. He won the first of his three Most Valuable Player Awards.  The Cardinals took the pennant with a 105-49 record but lost to the Yankees in a World Series rematch.

Musial, who batted .347 in 1944 before missing the 1945 season while serving in the Navy, always loved hitting at Ebbets Field. He averaged .359 lifetime at the cozy ballpark, with a .660 slugging percentage and a 1.108 OPS. Dodgers fans dubbed him Stan the Man in 1946. The story goes that St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer Bob Broeg listened one afternoon as fans throughout the ballpark exclaimed – grumbled? – “Here comes The Man” as Musial stepped into the batter’s box to take his hacks. Broeg wrote in his memoir, “So I began to refer to him as Stan (The Man) Musial. As you have noticed, it caught on.”10

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author used Baseball Reference for more information on the August 15, 1943, contest.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BRO/BRO194308151.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1943/B08151BRO1943.htm

Photo credit: Stan Musial, SABR-Rucker Archive.

Notes

1 Stan Musial as told to Bob Broeg, Musial: The Man’s Own Story (New York: Doubleday & Company. 1964), 50.

2 Musial, 75.

3 Musial, 75.                                                

4 Musial, 75.

5 Donald H. Drees, “Cards in Twilight Game after Splitting with Dodgers,” St. Louis Star and Times, August 16, 1943: 14.

6 Jack Smith, “Cards Slug Dodgers in First Game,” New York Daily News, August 16, 1943: 56.

7 Jack Cuddy (United Press), “Stan Musial, Majors’ Best Hitter, Tells Secrets of His Latest Success,” St. Louis Star and Times, August 16, 1943: 14.

8 Lee Scott, “Dodgers’ New First Sacker, Howard Schultz, to Play This Evening,” Brooklyn Citizen, August 16, 1943: 6.

9 Cuddy, 14.

10 Bob Broeg, Bob Broeg: Memories of a Hall of Fame Sportswriter (Champaign, Illinois: Sagamore Publishing, 1995), 156.