Notwithstanding his ultimate status as one of the greatest hitters in major-league history, Stan Musial’s early visions of a big-league career rested on his strong left arm. As he tried to persuade his father to allow him to sign with the St. Louis Cardinals, the young southpaw dreamed of translating the success he had enjoyed on the Donora, Pennsylvania, diamonds into a spot in a big-league rotation.

Like so many boys of that era, Musial played a full array of sports. In addition to baseball, he was a star on the Donora High School basketball team that won the sectional championship for the first time in school history.1 Meanwhile, as a result of his father’s prodding he was an active member of the Donora branch of the Polish Falcons, a club that offered training and competition in gymnastics and track and field. Musial would later look back with appreciation on the impactful “three body-building years [he] spent with the Falcons.”2 But his undeniable passion was baseball.

His early days in baseball were like that of countless kids scattered across the country. First introduced to the game when he was around 7 years old, he played in pickup games on makeshift fields with neighbors who in the beginning were usually older. For young Stan it did not matter, young or old, he just wanted to play, and he would wander from field to field looking for a game. But games were easier to find than quality equipment, and legend has it that Musial’s mother would make baseballs for him by binding up a bunch of rags that were wetted down and then covered with tape. Similarly, real balls were kept in service by applying electrical tape after the stitches and cover had begun to split. And for the most part they originally came into play when one of the fleet-footed neighborhood kids snagged one that was hit over the fence at the local ballpark.3

While pickup games were his start, Musial’s first real experience with organized baseball came with the Donora Zincs, a semipro entry in the local industrial league. One of Musial’s neighbors, Joe Barbao Sr., was a semipro player and coach and after Stan waited for him to come home from work the older Barbao would play catch with the young Musial, while also teaching him about the game, from the basics to the fine points.4 Eventually Barbao, who coached and pitched for the Zincs, made Stan the team’s batboy. And it was there, in the words of one author, that the “legend of Musial [began] on August 4, 1936, when Barbao asked the slender boy, in a scene that could have been lifted from a modern sports movie, if he wanted to work mop-up duty after his team was trailing badly.”5

An episode intended to offer some fun to the dutiful batboy instead became a revelation as the “man among boys” left an indelible impression.6 While there are conflicting reports of exactly how well he did – one says he went six innings and struck out 13, while another says he recorded 12 outs, five of which were strikeouts – there was no denying that he opened a lot of eyes.7 Indeed, observers quickly realized that, although he weighed only 140 pounds, the 5-foot-4-inch Musial could “throw BBs through a brick wall.”8 Ironically, his Zincs debut cost Barbao his job as manager at least briefly, for as impressive as Musial had been, the use of a nondues-paying member of the Donora Zinc Works A.A. angered some team members.9 Ultimately however, the team was won over by the youngster’s performance and he would pitch again, before the season was over, losing his first outing 7-5 when the Zincs made four errors but defeating the league-leading Fairhope team 2-1 with 11 strikeouts in a game not long before he joined the Cardinals farm team.10

Musial had only a single year of high-school baseball, playing on a team that in 1938 brought the game back to Donora High School after a 15-year hiatus.11 Though the team was essentially created around Musial and as a way to showcase his skill, his career was cut short when he headed off to the Cardinals’ farm system, thus becoming ineligible to return and play as a senior. But the one year he had was memorable, offering a preview of what was to be. Musial pitched, played the outfield, and batted cleanup. While he later recalled, “I didn’t like to pitch, because I could always hit, but in high school if you have the best arm, they always make you the pitcher,” he was the undisputed ace for a strong arm he did have.12 As his coach, likely with a bit of hyperbole, observed, “The trouble with [Musial] as a schoolboy pitcher was that we couldn’t find anyone who could catch him. He might strike out 18 men, but half of them would get to first on dropped first [sic] strikes.”13 On a Donora squad that went 9-3, Musial finished 4-2 with both losses coming as a result of major defensive lapses. Indeed, in one loss he struck out 14 batters, but three defensive misplays cost the team the game.14

Musial kicked off the revival of the school’s baseball program with an impressive performance, giving up just three hits while striking out 17 in seven innings in a 3-1 Opening Day victory.15 Just days later he followed that up with another stellar effort, striking out 14 and giving up just two hits in a 22-3 victory.16 Reflective of Musial’s status was his performance in the team’s first loss of the season, one in which Musial appeared in relief with no outs in the third inning after the opposing Charleroi Cougars had already scored three runs in the frame. While he gave up only a single hit the rest of the way, the Dragons could not get their offense on track, falling 5-1.17 For all of his pitching prowess, his hitting did not go unnoticed. Indeed, a grand slam that salvaged a late April win as well as a 3-for-3 performance that saved a subpar pitching effort were no less a part of his highlight reel than the pitching efforts that were capped by his season-ending win over Monongahela in which he gave up only two hits while striking out 12. And he walked only two.18

At season’s end, Musial was selected to the All-Star Section VI baseball team with the local paper reporting, “Stan Musial, all-around player and general utility man for a Dragon crew that amazed the valley with theoretical five game winning streak, won honors hands down as the league’s outstanding player. His play in the pasture and on the mound were highlights of the season.”19 The article added that he was “easily the league’s ace player, better termed a ‘minor leaguer.’”20 In the end, Musial’s one season pitching for Donora High offered significant evidence of why professional organizations saw him as a pitching prospect.

Despite all this, years later, when he wrote his autobiography, Musial wrote that he did not recall “much of his one season high school career.”21 While he did remember the team’s first game, and his school-record 17 strikeouts in the win over Monessen, his bigger memory involved a later game and a “tremendous home run [he] hit.”22 Playing against Monongahela City, coming to the plate with the bases loaded and Donora trailing in the late innings, Musial stroked a low ball that hit the fence 450 feet away on one bounce.23 In a comment that said much about the circuitous route Musial took to big-league stardom, he later wrote, “In spite of that famous clout, I was signed to a professional contract not as a hitter, but as a pitcher.”24

Given the nature of baseball at the time, it was the combination of his efforts with Donora High, the Zincs, and in American Legion ball that put him on the radar of the local scouts beginning in 1937. The early scouting reports touted his strong arm but noted that like many left-handers Musial had trouble harnessing that strength and struggled with his control. The earliest Cardinals scouting report, submitted in June 1937 by scout A.J. French, said he had a “good” arm, “good” fielding skills, and was “fast” with a “good curve ball.” He was termed a “green kid,” and a future prospect. It was a positive enough report that after a few visits and watching him play during the summer, the team offered him a contract.25 For Musial it was a dream come true and while he was contacted by other teams, including the Indians and Yankees, the direct and early contact by the Cardinals won him over.26

The bigger challenge was persuading his father to allow the 17-year-old pitcher-outfielder to sign. Ultimately, after an internal family battle in which his mother’s advocacy won out over his father’s hope that he would go to college or get a “real job,” permission was granted for the 17-year-old Musial to sign with the Cardinals which, as was the practice of the time, did not file the contract with the commissioner’s office until the following spring, allowing Musial to play a season for the revived Donora High program.27 Ironically, it was an approach that almost backfired, for when the local high-school athletic association learned of the contract there was debate over whether Musial could still play, the June effective date notwithstanding. Musial’s absence from the early days of practice while the matter was being settled led to some resentment among some of his teammates who felt he was “letting the school down.”28 However, his performance on the diamond, as well as his popularity among his peers, quickly rendered the issue moot.

Despite having a professional contract in hand, Musial spent a very active spring appearing in Zinc games in between the contests that comprised his only season of high-school baseball. But regardless of the venue, the young southpaw cemented his reputation as one of the area’s star players, both on the mound and at the plate, and once school was done, the Cardinals sent Musial to one of their Class-D minor-league teams for the 1938 summer season.29

With his contract going into effect in time for the 1938 season, the organization initially wanted to send Musial to their farm club in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, only about an hour from Donora. But for reasons that are not clear – there is speculation that he did not want to be so close to home – the young pitcher successfully lobbied for a different assignment and was instead sent to the Cardinals’ Williamson (West Virginia) team in the Class-D Mountain State League.30 He did not wow anyone, finishing with a 6-6 record and an earned-run average of 4.66 in 110 innings, but it was a start. The wild left-hander walked 80 while striking out 66.31 He did better with his bat, and looking back, he recalled not having any confidence in his pitching, but that his hitting was another story.32

Musial was again assigned to Williamson in 1939 but the familiarity of the venue did not result in any significantly greater success. Indeed, not only did he miss his high-school graduation (his longtime girlfriend and soon to be wife, Lil Labash, stood in for him and collected his diploma) but despite compiling a record of 9-2 while striking out 86, he also walked 85 in 92 innings, with an ERA of 4.30.33 At the end of the season, the team’s manager, Harrison Wickel, recommended that the Cardinals release him, noting “almost as an afterthought … that he was a nice young man who could hit – .352 with a home run.”34

As the 1939 season came to a close, Lil, knowing that her boyfriend was not only struggling at his craft, but was far from home and making little money, wanted him to quit and get a full-time job.35 Fortunately for Musial, Lil’s father, Sam Labash, was in his future son-in-law’s corner and with war on the horizon, urged Musial to give it one more shot and so, in the spring of 1940, Musial headed to Daytona Beach, Florida, a slight upgrade from his forays to Williamson.36 There, accompanied by a noticeably pregnant Lil – the couple had secretly married on Musial’s birthday, November 21, 1939 – he came under the tutelage of manager and former major-league pitcher Richard “Dickey” Kerr.37 Kerr was something of a baseball legend for his role on the 1919 Chicago White Sox. A rookie and the number-three starter on the infamous Black Sox, Kerr won both the third and the sixth games while the core of the team was throwing the World Series.38

For Musial and his young pregnant wife, Dickie Kerr was a lifesaver. Not only did the manager offer the kind of support that the young player needed but Kerr and his wife took the young couple into their home, a kindness that was rewarded in August when the young couple named their first child Richard Stanley Musial in honor of their benefactor.39 Kerr was no less a factor on the field.

Indeed, under Kerr’s watchful and practiced eye, Musial made some major gains and finished the season with an 18-5 record and a sterling ERA of 2.62, although his control was little better as he walked 145 batters in 223 innings.40

Indeed, a close inspection made clear that it was a season of ups and downs, one that offered reasons for hope while also raising doubts about his long-term future on the mound. Perhaps no game better illustrated the roller coaster that was Musial’s season than the team’s 7-5 win over Orlando on June 3. Musial carried a no-hitter into the seventh when suddenly the team’s defense, as well as his command, disappeared and while the team still secured the win, Musial’s effort showed him at his best and worst.41 Similarly, two weeks later he gave up eight walks, highlighted by a fifth-inning stretch in which he walked the bases loaded before giving up a two-run single, cementing a loss to the St. Augustine Saints.42 And yet, at the end of July he boasted a 12-4 record that had propelled the team to the top of the standings.43 And by the end of August, a preview of the league’s all-star game tabbed him as the expected starter.44

At the same time that Musial was seeking to make his mark as a pitcher, the team’s limited roster left manager Kerr little choice but to also use him in the outfield.45 The split duty worked well for the young ballplayer until August 11, when in a game against Orlando, Musial, playing center field, “went after a low, sinking line drive to left center, and attempted a somersault catch, something he’d been able to do from an early age.”46 But unlike countless previous times, “his spikes caught, sending him shoulder-first to the ground.”47 The pain and swelling in his shoulder were almost immediate, and it was soon determined that Musial was finished as a pitcher. While he pitched through the pain, finishing what was, on paper, his best year ever, he had serious doubts about his baseball future.

As the season came to an end and he pondered his future after three seasons of minor-league ball, Musial saw a three-season record of 33-13 with an ERA of 3.52 in D-level ball. He had pitched 425 innings and had walked 310 batters.48 Meanwhile, as just another body in the major leagues’ largest minor-league system, he was unable to get any of the medical care that his shoulder needed or which might have helped. With Lil and the baby having headed back to Donora ahead of him, Musial began to talk of returning home to work in the mills.49 But at the same time, Lil’s father was telling him to stay with it, that he would take care of Lil and young Richard.50 And Dickie Kerr was no less supportive or emphatic in his belief in Musial, telling the young ballplayer, “You won’t make it to the top as a pitcher, but you’ll get there some way because you are a damn fine ballplayer and a big-league hitter.”51 Little could Kerr, or anyone, have envisioned just how right he would be.

While Musial arrived at spring training in 1941, still listed as a pitcher, the effects of the previous season’s injury remained along with the almost casual previous reports of his hitting prowess. When those reports were confirmed in the early going of spring training, the transition from Stan Musial the pitcher to Stan Musial the hitter was quickly completed. When camp broke, and after much discussion, Musial was sent to the Cardinals’ Class-C club in Springfield, Missouri, to start what proved to be his final year in the minors. So well did the hitting “experiment” go – in 87 games he hit .379 – that in late July he was promoted to the Rochester Red Wings of the Double-A International League.52 There he hit .326 in 54 games, leading the team into the playoffs.53 Then, to his utter amazement, Musial was called up to the majors in September, walking into Sportsman’s Park for the first time on September 17, 1941.54 With his minor-league and pitching days behind him, his 12-game audition with the big-league St. Louis Cardinals, during which he hit .426, represented the start of a 22-season career that would ultimately see him recognized as one of the greatest hitters the game has ever known, while rendering his minor-league pitching exploits little more than soon-to-be-forgotten memories.55

But in fact, they were not forgotten by everybody, and no discussion of Musial’s pitching career would be complete without at least a mention of the only time he took the mound in a major-league game. The historic moment took place on September 28, 1952, the last day of the season. While Musial was in hot pursuit of a sixth batting title, the Cardinals were stuck in third place, playing out the string of a disappointing season. In an effort to drum up a crowd for the finale of a disappointing season, the team decided to have Musial relive the early days of his professional career, turning the clock back to a time when it was thought that his left arm was the key to his making the big leagues.56

Hoping to further enhance the entertainment value of the event, the front office decided that Musial would pitch to the Cubs’ Frank Baumholtz, who, when the plan was announced, was trailing Musial by only a point in the race for the batting crown. By the time game day arrived, Musial had widened the gap to 11 points. The lack of drama notwithstanding, the show went on.57

After the Cardinals starter, rookie left-hander Harvey Haddix, walked the Cubs’ leadoff batter, shortstop Tommy Brown, Cardinals manager Eddie Stanky emerged from the dugout, walked toward Haddix, and called for Musial to take his place on the mound. Haddix took over in right, while right fielder Hal Rice shifted to center. As Musial took his warm-up pitches, an irritated Cubs manager Phil Cavarretta told Baumholtz that the Cardinals were trying to make a fool of him, but an unruffled Baumholtz told his manager, “I don’t think so. I think it’s just a gimmick to get a lot of people in the stands to watch two also-rans on the last day of the season.”58

Meanwhile, on the mound, the 31-year old Musial, clearly anxious to complete the distasteful task, took fewer warm-up pitches than he was allowed as he prepared to face Baumholtz.

Indeed, years later he made clear that he had not been happy about the plan, thinking not only that it was nothing more than “contrived show,” but no less importantly the ever-professional Musial did not want to be seen as showing up Baumholtz.59 Much to his chagrin, those concerns had fallen on deaf ears.

But as he looked toward home plate, Musial found that the tables had been turned when the left-handed-hitting Baumholtz stepped into the right-handed batter’s box to face his Cardinals nemesis. Later reports said that Baumholtz had decided to bat right-handed as a gesture of sportsmanship. He did not want “to try for a cheap hit” against the pseudo-pitcher; nor did he want “to get something for nothing.”60 Regardless of how either player felt, the whole spectacle was over in no time.

On the mound for the first time in over a decade, Musial threw a single pitch. He later said he “flipped the ball,” while the St. Louis Post Dispatch called it a “fast ball.”61 Either way, Baumholtz hit “the ball squarely,” but the potential double-play ball “bounced on a big hop” to third baseman Solly Hemus, who was unable to handle it and was charged with an error.62

And with that, Musial returned to center field, Rice to right, and Haddix to the mound, and the game continued. The Cubs ultimately won 3-0 while Musial won his sixth batting title.

The whole episode was an incongruous reminder that one of the greatest hitters of all time began his professional journey as a pitcher before he suffered one of the most fortuitous injuries in baseball history.

BILL PRUDEN has been a teacher of American history and government for over 40 years. A SABR member for over two decades, he has contributed to SABR’s BioProject and Games project as well as a number of book projects. He has also written on a range of American history subjects, an interest undoubtedly fueled by the fact that as a seven-year-old he was at Yankee Stadium to witness Roger Maris’s historic 61st home run.

PHOTO CREDIT

Stan Musial, Trading Card Database.

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.

Stan Musial batted .365 in 1946 and won his second NL MVP award. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

INTRODUCTION

JEREMY GIBBS is a high-school teacher from St. Peters, Missouri, with a deep passion for baseball history. A lifelong St. Louis Cardinals fan, he enjoys catching games at Busch Stadium and competing in fantasy baseball. He lives in St. Peters with his wife, stepson, and their cat, Stanley “Musial” Gibbs, named after the Cardinals legend.

Whitey Kurowski, Marty Marion, Stan Musial, and Ray Sanders get together during the 1944 World Series against the St. Louis Browns. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

Stan Musial was involved in 13 World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals as a player, member of the front office, and later as the team’s senior ambassador – Mr. Cardinal. The 13 World Series, of which the Cardinals won eight, were spread out over eight different decades, making his affiliation with the Cardinals one of the longest with a single team in baseball history.

Musial played in four World Series before the age of 26. Given that he had already won two National League batting titles and cemented his position as one of the National League’s best players, it seemed certain that he and the Cardinals would continue to make frequent appearances in the World Series. Testament to how difficult it is to win a pennant and how nothing should be taken for granted, the 1946 fall classic was Musial’s last as a player in his 22-year Hall of Fame career in which he batted .331, hit 475 home runs, and drove in 1,951 runs.

In his first full season, 1942, Musial hit .315 with 32 doubles, 10 triples, 10 home runs, and 72 RBIs to help the Cardinals capture their first National League pennant and advance to the World Series for the first time since the Gas House Gang defeated the Detroit Tigers in the 1934 World Series.

1942 WORLD SERIES

The World Series was a matchup between two teams that won more than 100 games. The Cardinals, who trailed the National League-leading Brooklyn Dodgers by 10 games on August 5, rallied down the stretch – winning 43 of their last 51 games – to finish with a record of 106-48 (with two ties), two games ahead of the Dodgers.1 The Cardinals’ 106 victories remain the franchise record.

In Game One at Sportsman’s Park III, the Yankees’ Red Ruffing, threw 7 2/3 innings of no-hit ball before giving up a single to center fielder Terry Moore. Entering the bottom of the ninth, the Yankees led 7-0. Musial fouled out to lead off the bottom of the ninth before the Cardinals mounted an improbable comeback that fell just short. They scored four runs and had the bases loaded when he came to bat once more, representing the winning run. He hit a grounder to first baseman Buddy Hassett, who tossed the ball to reliever Spud Chandler for the game’s final out. Despite being angered at his own performance, going 0-for-4 and making two outs in the bottom of the ninth, “Musial took heart at the late-inning rally, believing more than ever that the Yankees were beatable.”2 In fact, the Cardinals’ ninth-inning near comeback “showed the Yankees that they were indeed, a worthy contender.”3

In Game Two, the Cardinals led 3-0 into the eighth inning only to see it evaporate on a run-scoring single by Joe DiMaggio and a two-run homer to deep right field by Charlie Keller.

In the bottom of the eighth, Enos Slaughter hit a two-out double and Musial followed with an RBI single to center. Musial’s first hit of the Series gave the Cardinals a 4-3 lead, which held up and evened the Series at a game each. Musial finished the day 1-for-4.

October 2 was a travel day for the two teams as the Series shifted to Yankee Stadium. The next day, a World Series-record crowd of 69,123 filled the ballpark for the pivotal Game Three.

According to Musial biographer James Giglio, Musial admitted to feeling numb on the occasion of his first visit to Yankee Stadium, “not only because he was a twenty-one-year-old only one season removed from Class C ball. The three-tiered stadium created an enormous obstacle for left fielders because of the haze of cigarette smoke and the shadows created by the October sun, which blanketed left field, making it difficult to see batted balls.”4

Game Three was a matchup between injury-plagued left-hander Ernie White, who was 7-5 with a 2.52 ERA in 1942 following a 17-win season in 1941. The Yankees countered with the right-handed Chandler, who went 16-5 with a 2.38 ERA during the regular season, and earned the save in Game One.

Ernie White scattered six hits and struck out six, tossing a shutout to outduel Chandler, who gave up only three hits and one run over eight innings. The Cardinals manufactured a run in the third on a walk, a bunt single, a sacrifice, and a groundout, and added an unearned run in the ninth to win 2-0. Musial finished the day 1-for-3, with a fourth-inning single to center. He was also intentionally walked in the top of the ninth with runners on second and third with nobody out.

Another World Series attendance record was established when 69,902 fans packed Yankee Stadium for Game Four, a matchup between Mort Cooper, who was making his second start of the Series, and right-handed rookie Hank Borowy, who was 15-4 with a 2.52 ERA during the regular season for the Yankees.

The Yankees took a first-inning lead and held it until the fourth inning when the Cardinals exploded for six runs.

Musial led off with a bunt single to the left side of the infield. A single and a walk followed, with Whitey Kurowski singling to give the Cardinals a 2-1 lead. Marty Marion walked to reload the bases before Mort Cooper hit a two-run bloop single to right field that ended the day for starter Borowy. Atley Donald came on in relief.

In the sixth, the Yankees scored five runs and tied it, 6-6,.the big blow Keller’s three-run homer.

The Cardinals scored two runs in the top of the seventh to regain the lead. Musial, who drew a walk, scored the second run of the inning on a fly out to center by Marion. The Cardinals added an insurance run in the ninth and won 9-6, taking a three-games-to-one lead. Musial finished the day 2-for-3 with one RBI and two walks, including an intentional pass in the top of the eighth.

Game Five was a low-scoring back-and-forth affair that stood 2-2 until the top of the ninth, when Whitey Kurowski hit a two-run homer to put the Cardinals ahead 4-2, and ultimately secured the World Series title. Musial was 0-for-4 in the series-clinching game.

As a batter, Musial didn’t have a great Series. He was 4-for-18 (.222), with a double, a Series-leading four walks that gave him an OPS of .364, and two runs batted in. The Cardinals players’ share for winning the World Series was $6,192.50, which easily surpassed the $4,250 salary Musial received during his rookie year.6

Musial ranked the Cardinals’ victory among his greatest sports moments. In an interview later in life he pointed to the five-game triumph as one of his biggest thrills. “Well, I guess winning the World Series as a rookie (1942). Beating the Yankees.”7 He also included his induction into the Hall of Fame and the first time he put on a Cardinals uniform.

After the Series, Musial, accompanied by his parents, returned to his home in Donora, Pennsylvania, where he worked part-time as a clerk in his father-in-law’s grocery store.8 Giglio recounted Musial’s farewell to his teammates at New York’s Pennsylvania Station: “Musial said his final good-byes to teammates who were heading back to St. Louis. (Marty) Marion remembered him ‘crying like a baby, shaking hands with everyone.’”9 This may have been in part due to the escalation of World War II and the uncertainty surrounding which players would be in the armed forces or would return to the Cardinals for the 1943 season.

1943 WORLD SERIES

In 1943, with many stars off serving in World War II, “Musial established himself as the premier player in the National League if not the whole game.”10 He led the league in games played (157), plate appearances (701), batting (.357), slugging (.562), on-base percentage (.425), on-base plus slugging percentage, or OPS (.988), hits (220), doubles (48), triples (20), total bases (347), and WAR (9.5).11 Not surprisingly, Musial won the first of his three Most Valuable Player awards and a second consecutive trip to the fall classic.

The Series was a rematch between the Cardinals and Yankees. The Cardinals were runaway winners in the National League, finishing with a record of 105-49, 18 games ahead of the second-place Cincinnati Reds. The Yankees won the pennant with a record of 98-56 and finished 13½ games ahead of the Washington Senators. Both teams were missing key players in their lineups who were away on military service. Given the results of the 1942 Series and the fact that the Cardinals had the finest pitching in the National League – Howie Pollet, Max Lanier, and Mort Cooper ranked one-two-three in the league in ERA at 1.75, 1.90 and 2.30 respectively12 –the Cardinals were favored to repeat as World Series champions.

The Yankees took Game One, 4-2, behind the pitching of 1943 American League MVP Spud Chandler (20-4, 1.64 ERA, 20 complete games). Joe Gordon homered for the Yankees, who scored the winning run on a wild pitch in the bottom of the sixth. Musial went 1-for-4, hitting a single to right in the eighth inning.

The next day the Cardinals evened the Series with a 4-3 victory. Mort Cooper pitched a complete game, backed by Marion’s third-inning solo home run and a two-run homer by Sanders. Musial was again 1-for-4; he led off the fourth with a single to center and scored on Kurowski’s single to center.

Because of wartime travel restrictions, Game Three was also played in New York. The Cardinals took a 2-0 lead in the top of the fourth. Musial led off with a single to left and went to third on a one-out double by Kurowski. After an intentional walk to Sanders, Danny Litwhiler singled to left, scoring Musial and Kurowski.

The Cardinals managed only one hit the rest of the way and made four errors as the Yankees scored three unearned runs. Musial finished 1-for-3 with a walk.

After a two-day break the Series resumed on October 10 at Sportsman’s Park. The Yankees took a commanding three-games-to-one lead with a 2-1 victory. Musial collected two hits without hitting the ball out of the infield. He lined out to second in the first inning, had a one-out bunt single in the fourth inning, grounded out to second in the sixth inning, and had a one-out infield single to third in the eighth.

The Series ended the next day when Chandler pitched his second complete game in a week, a 2-0 shutout. Dickey was the hitting hero with a sixth-inning two-run homer. Musial went 0-for-3 with a walk.

Musial finished the Series with a .278 batting average (5-for-18). He had no extra-base hits or RBIs and drew two walks. His performance was not what Cardinal fans had come to expect during the 1943 season. After the Series Musial often said that the Yankees “deserved to win” because they “played better ball” and “had the better pitching.”13 The reality that every game was close and could have gone either way was testament to Musial’s graciousness.

1944 WORLD SERIES

Musial helped the Cardinals win a third consecutive pennant with a season that was very similar to his MVP year of 1943. He hit .347 and led the National League in hits (197), doubles (51), on-base percentage (.440), slugging percentage (.549), OPS (.990), and WAR (8.9).14

The Series was an all-St. Louis affair as the city’s second-class citizens, the Browns, won their first and only American League pennant.15

Both teams played at Sportsman’s Park. The Browns owned the ballpark until they moved to Baltimore in 1953; the Cardinals were a tenant. In the opener, on Wednesday, October 4, a crowd of 33,242 watched right-handed “Sunday pitcher” Denny Galehouse, who was just 9-10 with a 3.12 ERA during the regular season, outduel Mort Cooper.16

Galehouse scattered seven hits on his way to a 2-1 complete-game victory. He lost his bid for a shutout in the ninth inning when the Cardinals scored their only run on a fly ball by Ken O’Dea, pinch-hitting for relief pitcher Blix Donnelly. The difference in the game was a fourth-inning, two-run homer by first baseman George McQuinn. Musial went 1-for-3. He singled to center in the first inning and laid down a sacrifice bunt in the third that advanced baserunners to second and third, only to be stranded.

The Cardinals evened the series with a 3-2, 11-inning Game Two victory that saw one of the greatest defensive plays in World Series history.17

Sanders led off the bottom of the 11th with a with a single to center and was sacrificed to second by Kurowski. O’Dea, pinch-hitting for the second consecutive game, singled to center to drive in the winning run. Musial was 1-for-5. His only hit was an eighth-inning leadoff single to center.

The two teams switched dugouts for Game Three, with the Browns assuming the role of the home team. The game was a matchup between a pair of 17-game winners. The Browns chased rookie Ted Wilks when they scored four in the fourth and added two insurance runs in the seventh to beat the Cardinals 6-2. Musial was held to one hit, a single to right field in the top of the third, in four trips to the plate. The Browns’ Jack Kramer threw a complete game, scattering seven hits and striking out 10.

The Cardinals tied the Series again with a 5-1 Game Four victory. Musial was their hitting star, going 3-for-4 with two runs scored and two RBIs on his only World Series home run, to right field in the first inning off Sig Jakucki.

The pivotal fifth game was a rematch between Game One starters Mort Cooper and Galehouse. Both starters went the distance, with Cooper tossing a 2-0 shutout to give the Cardinals a three-games-to-two lead, on solo home runs by Sanders and Danny Litwhiler. Although he didn’t factor into the scoring, Musial was 1-for-3 with a first-inning walk and a two-out double in the third.

The Series ended on October 9 when Max Lanier limited the Browns to one run in 5 1/3 innings and Wilks atoned for his Game Three struggles with 3 2/3 no-hit innings. Musial went 0-for-4 in the Cardinals’ 3-1 victory.

While still below the performance Cardinal fans had come to expect from him, the 1944 World Series was Musial’s best from a statistical perspective. He hit .304 (7-for-23) with two doubles, a home run, two RBIs, and a .552 slugging percentage.

The Cardinals’ and Musial’s run of three consecutive trips to the World Series came to an end in 1945. Probably not coincidentally, Musial was inducted into the Navy in January of that year.18

With Musial out of the lineup, the Cardinals fell to second place in the National League. The team still finished with an admirable record of 95-59, three games behind the pennant-winning Chicago Cubs. Given Musial’s combined WAR of 44.1 in five full seasons between 1943 and 1948 (an average WAR of 8.8) his presence might have pushed the Cardinals to a fourth consecutive pennant in 1945.

1946 WORLD SERIES

Musial was discharged from the Navy in March 1946 and immediately rejoined the Cardinals. Enjoying one of the best years of his career, he led the National League in games played (156), plate appearances (702), at-bats (624), runs scored (124), hits (228), doubles (50), triples (20), batting average (.365), slugging percentage (.587), OPS (1.021), total bases (366), WAR (9.3), and oWAR (9.6).19 He drove in 103 runs in the first of 10 seasons in which he had 100 or more RBIs. For his efforts he earned his second NL MVP award.

With Musial and many of his Cardinals teammates back in the lineup, the Cardinals returned to the top of the National League standings with a record of 98-58, narrowly edging the Brooklyn Dodgers by two games and earning their fourth trip to the World Series in five years.20

In the American League, the Boston Red Sox finally got over the hump and won the pennant going away, 104-50, 12 games ahead of the Detroit Tigers.

The much-anticipated Series offered a matchup between two of the game’s biggest stars at the prime of their careers. Ted Williams, the Red Sox left fielder, who had missed the 1943, ’44, and ’45 seasons while serving in the US Navy and Marine Corps, made a triumphant return with an MVP season of his own.21

Before the Series there was a great deal of discussion as to who was the better hitter. Dodgers manager Leo Durocher said, “Musial is two to one a better hitter. You can pitch to Williams, crowd him and keep the ball on the handle. Williams can hit to only one field. Musial can hit to all fields and you can’t fool him. Williams has only one advantage. He has more power and power worries you. You are afraid to make one mistake. But I’ll take Musial any day – and what is more, I’m not comparing dispositions.”22

Game One featured a pair of 20-game winners as starting pitchers, Howie Pollet (21-10, 2.10 ERA) against Boston’s Tex Hughson (20-11 2.75).

The Red Sox held a 1-0 lead until the bottom of the sixth, when Red Schoendienst, Musial’s roommate, reached on a one-out weak roller to shortstop. He advanced to second when Moore grounded out to second. Musial tied the game with a double to right.

Tied 2-2 after nine innings, the game was decided in the 10th when Rudy York hit a two-out home run to left. 3-2, Red Sox. Musial came to the plate with a man on second and one out in the bottom of the inning and grounded out, finishing the game 1-for-5.

Game Two saw Harry Brecheen outpitch Mickey Harris, with a four-hit shutout. He helped his own cause at the plate. After Del Rice led off the bottom of the third with a double to left field, Brecheen singled to right to give the Cardinals a 1-0 lead. In the bottom of the fifth, with Rice again on base, Brecheen bunted and reached second on a bad throw on a force play. Moore’s single brought Rice home with the game’s second run, and Musial’s force-play grounder scored Brecheen, making it 3-0, the game’s final score. Musial finished 0-for-4 with an RBI.

At Fenway Park, Dave Ferriss (25-6, 3.25 ERA) tossed a 4-0 shutout, beating Murry Dickson. York, the hitting hero in Game One, hit a three-run home run to left field in the bottom of the first to give the Red Sox all the runs they needed.

Musial was 1-for-3 with a first-inning walk. He then stole second before being picked off by Ferriss as he tried to steal third.23 Musial’s hit was a two-out triple in the ninth. Slaughter struck out to end the game, stranding Musial at third.

The Cardinals scored 12 runs on a World Series record-tying 20 hits in Game Four. The final score was 12-3. Cardinals right-hander Red Munger surrendered nine hits but yielded only one earned run. Musial was 1-for-5 with a walk, one run scored, and a two-run third-inning double that scored Schoendienst and Moore.

Pollet failed to get out of the first inning in Game Five. Down 1-0 and with just one out and two runners on base, Al Brazle came on in relief. Joe Dobson started for Boston. The Cardinals tied the score in the second when Harry Walker doubled to left field, driving in Joe Garagiola. In the bottom of the second, the Red Sox’ Don Gutteridge drove in Roy Partee to give the Red Sox a 2-1 lead. Boston added one more run in the sixth and three in the seventh.

Down 6-1, the Cardinals made one last effort to get back into the game in the ninth. Musial led off with a walk and later scored on Walker’s two-run single, but the scoring ended. 6-3 victors, the Red Sox led three games to two.

Musial was 1-for-3 with a walk. His lone hit was a two-out double to center in the sixth inning.

The series resumed in St. Louis with a Game Six rematch of Game Two starters Harris and Brecheen. The Cardinals scored three runs in the bottom of the third inning. After they scored their first run, Musial kept the inning going with an infield single that moved Schoendienst to third. RBI singles by Kurowski and Slaughter followed. The Cardinals held a 3-0 lead. The game ended with a 4-1 Cardinals victory. Musial was 1-for-4 with one run scored.

One thing about Game Seven of the World Series is that it is often close. Of the 40 winner-take-all World Series contests, 15 have been decided by a single run.24 Game Seven of the 1946 World Series was one of those 15 instances.

The Red Sox scored once in the top of the first, and the Cardinals tied the score in the second. They took a 3-1 lead in the bottom of the fifth when pitcher Dickson hit an RBI double and Schoendienst followed with an RBI single.

In the Red Sox eighth, Dom DiMaggio hit a two-run double to right to tie the game at 3-3. In the process of legging out the double. DiMaggio pulled a hamstring. With Williams due to hit, the Red Sox’ Leon Culberson ran for DiMaggio – a move that would play a huge role in what transpired in the bottom of the inning. Williams, who was playing hurt, ended the inning with a pop fly to second base.25

The events in the bottom of the eighth included one of the most analyzed plays in baseball history – the “mad dash” by Enos Slaughter, who singled and then scored the go-ahead run from first base on a two-out base hit to center by Harry Walker. Did Johnny Pesky “hold the ball” and fail to throw home in time to get Slaughter? Should Walker’s hit have been scored a double (as it was) or a single? The indisputable fact was that the Cardinals took a 4-3 lead and, though Boston batters led off the ninth with back-to-back singles, they could not get the tying run home.26

Musial finished the Series 6-for-27 with four walks, and four RBIs. His MVP counterpart, Williams, finished 5-for-25 with five walks and one RBI.

The 1946 World Series turned out to Musial’s last appearance in the postseason as a player. Who would have thought that possible at the time, considering that the 26-year-old had already played in four World Series?

Reflecting back on the 1946 season and World Series, Musial considered it one of “the best years of our lives.”27 Shortly after the Series, Musial decided to move to St. Louis from his hometown of Donora. He said, “I think it’s wise for a baseball player to make his home where he’s made his reputation. I always worried about my baseball career, about getting hurt, and I wanted a business to fall back on.”

Summary of Musial’s World Series Playing Career

Despite winning three of the four World Series he appeared in, Musial’s Series statistics were far off his career performance. In his 23 World Series games, he hit just .256 (22-for-86) with 7 doubles, a triple, one home run, and 8 RBIs. His .742 OPS in 99 plate appearances was more than 200 points lower than his career OPS of .976.

Joseph Stanton, a Musial biographer, addressed the discrepancy between Musial’s regular-season statistics and his World Series performances. “He always found it difficult to hit in championship games when white-shirted spectators crowed into the center field seats. … Musial’s knack for seeing and interpreting the emergence of the ball out of the pitcher’s hand was one of the keys to his greatness as a hitter. With that edge compromised he tended to underperform in World Series contests.”28 This, coupled with the fact that he was facing superior pitchers, may explain the difference.

Musial’s home and away splits in World Series competition support Stanton’s claim. In 14 World Series games at Sportsman’s Park, Musial hit .241 (13-for-54) with 4 doubles, 1 home run, 5 RBIs, 5 bases on balls, and 4 strikeouts. In nine World Series games contested on the road, Musial hit .281 (9-for-32) with 3 doubles, 1 triple, 7 bases on balls, and no strikeouts.

Defensively, Musial was a solid World Series performer. In 96 total chances at three different positions (left field, right field, and first base) he made only one error, a miscue in right field in Game Five of the 1944 World Series that did not factor into the scoring. He finished his World Series career with a .990 fielding percentage.

For the remainder of Musial’s career, the Cardinals finished no higher than second place (five times) in the National League.

When he announced his retirement in August of 1963, Musial declared that he would “like to go out on a winner,” noting, “Our 1942 club was farther behind and won. … I’ve dreamed for a long time of playing in one more World Series. I think we still have a chance to do it.”29 Despite winning 19 of 20 from August 30 to September 15 to pull within one game of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Cardinals were 2-8 over their final 10 games and finished six games behind, ending Musial’s hope of returning to the fall classic.

The final Cardinals game of the season, which took place in St. Louis, was a grand farewell party for Musial. The pregame festivities included numerous speakers, including Commissioner Ford Frick, who bestowed tributes on Musial. Teammate Ken Boyer presented Musial with a ring from the players with the number 6, Musial’s jersey number, set in diamonds, “a gift Stan especially appreciated because his World Series rings from the 1940s had been stolen from his home several years before.”30

1964 WORLD SERIES

After retiring, Musial moved into the Cardinals front office as a team vice president, but primarily in a public-relations role. The Cardinals won the pennant in 1964 with a record of 93-69, one game ahead of the Cincinnati Reds and Philadelphia Phillies.

The Cardinals faced a familiar World Series foe, the Yankees, pennant winners by one game over the Chicago White Sox. Led by Boyer, the Cardinals defeated the Yankees in seven games to capture their first World Series title in 18 years.

After the Cardinals’ victory, Musial was often asked if he regretted retiring after the 1963 season. With typical modesty, he noted that had he not retired, the Cardinals would not have acquired Lou Brock, and claimed that a 1964 Cardinals team with a Musial instead of a Brock would not have won the World Series.31 While the answer was effective at fending off the frequently asked question, “there must have been some moments in which he thought about how satisfying it would have been to have been on the field for one more championship season.”32

On January 23, 1967, Musial was named the Cardinals’ general manager. Once he remarked, “I have a darn good job, but please don’t ask me what I do.”33 This gave some the impression that he may not have been comfortable in his new role.

The Cardinals won the 1967 pennant with a 101-60 record, an 18½-game improvement over 1966, and advanced to World Series against the Boston Red Sox – a rematch of the 1946 Series, Musial’s last as a player.

1967 WORLD SERIES

Just as in 1946, the Cardinals defeated the Red Sox four games to three, the Cardinals’ fifth World Series title during Musial’s tenure with the team. Despite the team’s success, Musial resigned as general manager on December 5, less than a year after accepting the job. He remains the only general manager of a team that won the World Series in his only year on the job.

When asked what the difference in the Series was after the Cardinals’ Game Seven victory, Musial praised the manager, his former teammate and longtime roommate Red Schoendienst. “If there was a turning point in the Series,” Musial said, “it was in Red pitching Gibson on Sunday so he would be ready if there was a seventh game.”34 Right-hander Bob Gibson won three games to capture his second World Series MVP Award.

Musial’s departure from the general manager position came as a surprise to fans and the press. He later provided plausible reasons for his “retirement,” including the sudden death of his business partner Biggie Garagnani, which Stan said required him to devote more of hist time to their restaurant.35

The media did not completely buy Musial’s explanation and there were rumors of a rift in the front office. The Sporting News reported that “emerging differences came to a head involving Musial over the distribution of World Series tickets.” Those close to Musial seemed to agree that the supposed conflict over the releasing of too many World Series tickets was not the actual reason for his departure. More likely, Augie Busch, the team owner, probably told Musial, who enjoyed the public-relations part of the job, that he needed to master the paperwork, baseball law, and other intricacies of the position.36 No longer the team’s general manager, Musial remained Mr. Cardinal, the team’s senior ambassador for the remainder of his life.

MR. CARDINAL AND THE WORLD SERIES

The Cardinals played in seven more World Series during the remainder of Musial’s lifelong tenure as Mr. Cardinal, winning three and losing four.

On August 4, 1968, a statue of Musial was erected outside Busch Memorial Stadium. That year the Cardinals repeated as pennant winners, their first repeat since they won three in a row in 1942-1944. Many out-of-towners attending the World Series against the Detroit Tigers got their first look at the statue of Musial with its inscription, “Here stands baseball’s perfect warrior; here stands baseball’s perfect knight.”37 The Tigers rallied from a three-games-to-one deficit to win the Series in seven games, denying the Cardinals back-to-back World Series titles.

The Cardinals appeared in three World Series in the 1980s. The first was in 1982, when Musial was approaching his 62nd birthday. The Cardinals beat the Milwaukee Brewers in seven games. The team gave Musial a World Series ring.

The Cardinals won pennants in 1985, 1987, and 2004, but lost all three World Series. They extracted some level of revenge for 1968 by defeating the Tigers in five games in 2006. As the Cardinals’ senior ambassador, Musial earned a seventh World Series ring.

On January 15, 2011, already suffering from Alzheimer’s, Musial was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the country, by President Barack Obama.38 That season the Cardinals made their final appearance in the World Series during Musial’s lifetime. The Cardinals beat the Texas Rangers in seven games, capturing the franchise’s 11th title – the eighth during Musial’s affiliation with the team. As in 1982 and 2006, the Cardinals awarded Musial a World Series ring.

Musial died on January 13, 2013, from complications associated with his battle with Alzheimer’s. He was 92 years old.

PAUL HOFMANN has been a SABR member since 2002. He has contributed to more than 25 SABR publications and co-edited The 1883 Philadelphia Athletics: American Association Champions. Paul is currently the assistant vice provost for international affairs at the University of Louisville and teaches in the College of Management at National Changhua University of Education in Taiwan. A native of Detroit, Paul is an avid baseball card collector and lifelong Detroit Tigers fan. He currently resides in Lakeville, Minnesota.

SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author relied on Baseball-reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and Baseball-Almanac.com.

NOTES

1 1942 World Series. Retrieved on September 11, 2023, from www.baseball-almanac.com/ws/yr1942ws.shtml.

2 James N. Giglio, Musial: From Stash to Stan the Man (Columbia; University of Missouri Press, 2001), 78.

3 1942 World Series.

4 Giglio, 78-79.

5 Giglio, 79. Multiple players have had two hits in one inning in a World Series game. Babe Ruth was the first to achieve this feat, in Game Four of the 1926 World Series between the Yankees and Cardinals. As of 2025, J.D. Martinez of the Boston Red Sox was the last player to have two hits in one inning during a World Series game. He did it in Game Four of the 2018 World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

6 Giglio, 80.

7 Mark Malinowski, “Biofile Stan Musial Interview.” Retrieved on December 3, 2024, from https://mrbiofile.com/2024/01/04/biofile-stan-musial-interview.

8 Malinowski.

9 “The Kids,” Time, October 12, 1942: 77-79, as cited by Giglio. 77-79.

10 Jan Finkel, “Stan Musial,” SABR BioProject. https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/stan-musial/

11 OPS and WAR did not exist at the time and are retrospectively calculated.

12 Howie Pollet missed the 1943 World Series after leaving the team in August to serve in the military, and did not qualify for the ERA title.

13 Joseph Stanton, Stan Musial: A Biography (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2007), 38.

14 Surprisingly, Musial finished fourth in the MVP voting. The award went to teammate Marty Marion, whose play at shortstop was instrumental in the Cardinals winning the pennant going away. The Cardinals finished with a record of 105-49, 14½ games ahead of the second-place Pittsburgh Pirates.

15 “The undisputed underdog, the Brownies barely managed to win the league championship on the last day of the season. The Browns captured the pennant by wining only 89 games for a winning percentage of .578, the lowest for an American League champion to that point.” Giglio, 92. One year later the Detroit Tigers won the 1945 American League pennant with a winning percentage of .575.

16 Galehouse, who had earned a deferment for military service was working six days a week at the Goodyear Aircraft plant in Akron, Ohio. From mid-May until the end of the season, Galehouse would leave Akron after his Saturday shift, travel all night by train to wherever the Browns were playing, pitch the first game of the Sunday doubleheader, then immediately returned to Akron and put in another six-day week at the factory before repeating the process the following weekend. Glenn Stout, “Denny Galehouse,” SABR BioProject, retrieved on September 14, 2024, from https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/denny-galehouse/.

17 “In the 11th inning, with George McQuinn on second, [Mark] Christman laid a bunt down the third-base line that [reliever] Donnelly fielded with his bare hand and tossed to third to get the runner. The play was heralded as the defensive play of the World Series and one of the better defensive plays in World Series history.” Greg Omoth, “Blix Donnelly,” SABR BioProject, retrieved on July 13, 2024, from https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/blix-donnelly/.

18 For a good summary of Musial’s 1945 season in military service, see “Stan Musial,” Gary Bedingfield’s Baseball in Wartime, retrieved on May 15, 2024 from https://www.baseballinwartime.com/player_biographies/musial_stan.htm.

19 oWAR measures a player’s offensive achievements.

20 In 1946 the Cardinals and the Brooklyn Dodgers finished the regular season tied for first place. The winner was decided by a best-of-three playoff. The Cardinals won, two games to none, and advanced to the World Series. All statistics were included in the regular season.

21 The 27-year-old two-time batting champion (1941 and 1942), hit .346 with 38 home runs and 123 RBIs while leading the American League in runs scored (142), bases on balls (156), on-base percentage (.497), slugging average (.667), OPS (1.164), and total bases (343). There have been few World Series that rivaled the star power of the 1946 fall classic.

22 Stan Baumgartner, “Stan Musial a Better Hitter Than Williams – Durocher,” The Sporting News, October 9, 1946: 25.

23 Musial had 7 stolen bases and 9 caught-stealing during the 1946 season.

24 “A Brief History: Here’s Every World Series Game 7,” retrieved on August 17, 2024, from https://www.mlb.com/news/history-of-world-series-game-7-c39984458?msockid=014d8d273707667a354299cb36ff6727.

25 Williams played the Series with a severely bruised elbow, sustained when he was hit by a pitch during an exhibition game staged to keep Red Sox players in shape as they awaited the resolution of Cardinals-Dodgers playoff.

26 For a summary of the game, see Gregory H. Wolf’s article for SABR’s Games Project at https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/october-15-1946-countrys-mad-dash-enos-slaughter-scores-winning-run-for-cardinals-in-game-7/.

27 Giglio, 143.

28 Stanton, 39-40.

29 Stanton, 103.

30 Stanton, 105.

31 Stanton, 111.

32 Stan Musial as told to Bob Broeg, The Man’s Own Story (New York: Doubleday, 1964), 229-230.

33 Jan Finkel.

34 Lowell Reidenbaugh, “Gibson, Cards – Second to None,” The Sporting News. October 14, 1967: 5.

35 Stanton, 119.

36 Giglio, 287.

37 Bob Addie, “Addie’s Atoms,” The Sporting News, October 19, 1968: 14.

38 Basketball legend Bill Russell also received a Medal of Freedom that day.

Baseball Magazine put Stan Musial on its cover in September 1948. The Cardinals superstar was putting the finishing touches on his greatest season in the big leagues. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

Every renowned artist has his or her most famous creation, their pièce de résistance, that singularly most remarkable composition that stands out in an already impressive body of work.

For the baseball virtuoso known as Stan Musial, that was the season of 1948.

One of the most accomplished batsmen in big-league history, during a 22-season career that saw him set dozens of records, Musial composed no other 154-game schedule better than that of the Summer of ’48. It marked the closest he ever ever came to winning a Triple Crown:

• He led the National League with a .376 batting average, his highest single-season mark and the third of his seven batting titles.
• He led the NL with 131 runs batted in, the most he ever drove in during one season – this from the player who had the league record for career RBIs until 1971.
• He finished third in the league with 39 home runs; Pittsburgh’s Ralph Kiner and New York’s Johnny Mize tied for the NL top honor with 40 homers apiece. Musial hit 475 home runs in his career, but his 1948 total marked his single-season best and was 20 more than his previous season high.

One more home run would have made Musial the first NL Triple Crown winner since Joe Medwick turned the feat with the Cardinals in 1937.

“Why be greedy?” Musial said of missing that achievement. “I had a pretty good year, so why wish for more than I had coming to me? My only regret is the Cardinals didn’t win the pennant.”1

Musial’s 1948 display still holds up as one of the game’s greatest seasons. His 11.3 WAR is tied with Ty Cobb’s 1917 season and Mickey Mantle’s 1957 season for number 14 all-time. With that, Musial picked up his third NL Most Valuable Player honor.

“I think he’s the best hitter in baseball,” said Cardinals President Bob Hannegan after signing Musial to a new two-year contract at the end of the season.2

Wrote Jimmy Cannon of the New York Post: “Musial was the greatest player in Organized Ball this year, and there is no way this claim can be challenged. Stan is younger than Joe DiMaggio and sounder. He can do more than Ted Williams on a ball field and is faster than Lou Boudreau. … Musial is the only great ball player in this period who is not changed by circumstances.”3

Quite a contrast to the ballplayer described just a year earlier as “smug” with a “swelled noggin” who could do little more than flail at pitches. Indeed, Musial sported a stunningly paltry .196 batting mark 44 games into the 1947 season. He didn’t get that average above .300 for good until September 3.4

Even though Musial dealt with an inflamed appendix all season, that subnormal hitting display had baseball fans around the country questioning whether Musial really was as good as Ted Williams – or any of the game’s other top hitters, for that matter.

St. Louis writer Bob Broeg called out the most vocal national critic in a September 1947 article in The Sporting News, in which he referenced a recent Collier’s magazine article that had writer Kyle Crichton blaming the Cardinals’ slow start on what he described as Musial’s “smugness and contentedness.”5

Broeg went on to quote the magazine piece:

“Chief among the deflated personages was Mr. Stanley Musial of Donora, Pa., who led the league in hitting [in 1946], but was now making motions at the plate like a spinster repulsing a wasp with a towel. There were rumors that Stanley was suffering from expanso largesso cerebello, meaning a swelled noggin. After a spring holdout that had brought him a reputed salary of $27,000 – entirely merited by his record – he had taken on the airs of a lesser lama and not available for press interviews.”6

Crichton then opined that Musial’s early-season slump and appendicitis turned him into “a very chastened young man” and “gave him a new mental state that was an improvement.”7

Cardinals manager Eddie Dyer took great exception to any criticism of his star player and told Broeg: “In my 25 years in baseball, Stan is as fine a boy as I’ve ever seen or managed. He’s never been swell-headed. This season that poisonous appendix deprived him of his strength and timing. He pleaded to stay in the lineup, and I never saw a fellow try harder. Eventually he became more his old self, but day in and day out he still won’t be the old Musial until his system is rid of that chronic trouble.”8

Team captain Terry Moore noted that Musial remained as level-headed as ever as a player. Writers who covered the team, both in St. Louis and on the road, took exception to the report of Musial’s poor availability for interviews. And Musial acknowledged that he never had talked with Crichton; he said he was too ill when the writer called his hotel room one day asking for an interview but said he could talk the following day. Apparently, Crichton never took Musial up on that offer.9

Musial responded to the criticism by going 14-for-32 during the final nine games in September 1947, pushing his average to .312 and finishing fifth in the NL batting race.

On October 15, 1947, the Cardinals’ team surgeon, Dr. Robert F. Hyland, removed Musial’s appendix at St. John’s Hospital in St. Louis.10

The Cardinals opened the campaign on April 20 with a three-game series against the Reds at Sportsman’s Park. Musial, playing right field and batting third in the order, had an RBI double in five plate appearances in a 4-0 victory, then went hitless with two walks and a run scored in a 5-2 triumph the next day.

His first multihit game of the season came in a 4-3 loss on April 22, when he stroked a single, double, and triple with a pair of RBIs.

The Cardinals embarked on a three-game trip to Chicago – Musial was held hitless in two of those contests – then finished the road trip with a couple of games in Cincinnati. That’s where his season began to take on a sparkling luster.

The Cardinals fell to the Reds 4-3 in 14 innings on April 29, but Musial went 3-for-5 with a walk, his first home run of the season and four RBIs. He closed out the road trip April 30 by going 5-for-6, including two doubles and a homer, with another four runs batted in to lead the assault in a 13-7 win.

“I’m supposed to help the club with my hitting, so I feel like I’m doing my duty this year,” Musial said. “It seems to come easy to me this year. I’ve picked up the 12 pounds I lost last spring. … Besides that, I’m more relaxed at my new position – in the outfield.”11

Still, the Cardinals lugged just a 4-4 record when they returned home for what would be a 12-game homestand against six of the NL’s seven other teams. The Cardinals won nine of them, and Musial had at least one hit in 10 of them. By the time they boarded an eastbound train after a 6-5, 10-inning win over the Pittsburgh Pirates on May 16, Musial was sporting a .350 batting mark and 18 RBIs through 20 games.

And, of course, it was destined to get even better immediately. The Cardinals were headed for Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field – The Man’s home away from home.

• May 18: 2-for-4, one double, two runs scored in a 4-3 Cardinals win.
• May 19: 5-for-5 with a walk in six plate appearances, a double and a triple with two RBIs in a 14-7 win.
• May 20: 4-for-6, with two doubles, a homer, three runs scored, and two more RBIs, as the Cardinals swept the series with a 13-4 victory

Sometimes numbers really do tell key parts of a story. Here are more from Musial’s 1948 season:

• He batted .411 with a 1.321 OPS in 237 plate appearances against left-handed pitchers – and Musial batted from the left side.
• He drew a total of 83 walks and struck out only 33 times.
• His longest hitting streak was 13 games, his longest on-base streak 21 games. Musial never went more than four straight games without a hit or more than five consecutive games without an RBI.
• Bolstered by a .412 batting average in June – during which he reached base in more than half his plate appearances – Musial wrapped up the season’s first half with a .403 batting mark.

On July 9, four days before he had a single and home run in the NL’s 5-2 All-Star Game loss, Musial lashed a single and a home run in a 6-4 Cardinals victory over the Reds at Sportsman’s Park. That lifted his season batting average to .412, along with 20 home runs and 64 runs batted in – through 74 games played.

Compare that to Ted Williams’s showing for the Red Sox in 1941, when his .406 average still stands as the last time anyone topped the .400 mark for a full season. Williams had a .405 average, 16 homers, and 61 RBIs after 74 games.

Baseball fans in 1948 hoped to add this Bowman card of Stan Musial to their collection. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

Stan Musial completes his swing on this 1948-49 Leaf trading card. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

Stan Musial came into 1949 after what would turn out to be the best season in his Hall of Fame career. In 1948 he won his third (and, as it turned out, final) Most Valuable Player Award after leading the league in nearly every significant offensive category, including batting average (.376) and RBIs (131), and falling one homer shy of the Triple Crown as his 39 round-trippers ranked second, behind Johnny Mize’s and Ralph Kiner’s 40. In the statistical categories where Musial came out on top, many were by significant margins. His batting average was 43 points higher than that of runner-up Richie Ashburn; his .702 slugging average bested runner-up Johnny Mize by nearly 140 points, while his 1.152 OPS was nearly 200 points above that of runner-up Mize.

The historical significance of Musial’s season becomes even clearer if we consider Wins Above Replacement, as Musial’s 11.3 WAR was the 11th-best of any player in baseball’s Modern Era to that point, a total exceeded only by Babe Ruth (who topped that mark six times), Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gehrig, and Honus Wagner.

Beyond postseason honors, Musial’s season earned him a nearly 40 percent raise for 1949, from $36,000 to $50,000, and the Cardinals further rewarded him with a two-year contract, something rare at a time when baseball’s reserve clause gave owners no practical reason to strike multiyear deals with their players.

Less than a month later, however, tragedy struck. In the last week of October, a thick chemical fog from zinc factory smokestacks settled over Musial’s native Donora, Pennsylvania, resulting in more than 20 deaths and, according to some estimates, sickness in roughly a third of Donora’s 15,000 people.1 Because his mother, Mary, was among those who faced respiratory problems from the smog, Musial moved his parents to St. Louis, but two months later, his father, Lucasz, suffered his second stroke in less than a year and died at the age of 59.2

One other event that occurred in the offseason bears reporting simply because of its oddness: In February, as Musial was on his way to Florida for spring training, a 24-year-old Texan named Richard Edward Brame checked himself into a luxury resort in Mississippi under Musial’s name, telling everyone he was the star player, giving interviews in which he promised to hit .400 and planned to make a visit to a VA hospital wearing his uniform.3 When a reporter learned that Musial was then actually in Albany, New York, he alerted police and Brame ended up serving 10 days in jail for vagrancy.4

Musial’s trials carried over onto the field as he struggled to hit in spring training. While there are no comprehensive statistics for Grapefruit League games, news reports from Florida paint a bleak picture. On April 4, after a loss to the Yankees, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported, “Stan Musial went hitless again and is in his longest slump of the spring.”5 Two days later, as the Cardinals broke camp and moved north for a series of exhibition games before the season started, the St. Louis Star and Times headlined a story: “Musial in Slump as Club Leaves Florida.”6 A little more than a week later, he was still not hitting well; the same newspaper commented, with an allusion to a restaurant business he had recently invested in, “Musial isn’t hitting the size of one of his restaurant steaks, although a year ago on the way home ‘The Man’ was clearing fences.”7

Musial continued his funk even after the season got underway, going 1-for-7 in the team’s first two games in Cincinnati, both losses. It was so bad that when he came to bat for the first time in the Cardinals’ home opener on April 22 that fans heckled him for his .143 batting average.8 He responded with a massive home run that an Associated Press reporter suggested meant he had “found his batting eye” after his “utterly ineffective” start.9

The writer, however, was premature as Musial managed only 9 hits in 37 at-bats through the Cardinals’ 10 games in April, and he closed out the month hitting .243. There was one bright spot, however, as three of those hits were home runs. Acknowledging that projecting season’s totals with such a small sample size was foolish, St. Louis Post-Dispatch sports editor J. Roy Stockton nonetheless observed that Musial was on pace for 77 home runs. He went on, “Talking to Musial … it would make him very happy to hit scads of home runs. He’s been the most valuable player … three times and has led the league in virtually every phase of offensive baseball. … There aren’t many new honors left, but wouldn’t it be something to … lead both leagues in four-baggers?”10

Then, even the power vanished. Musial touched .300 with a 3-for-3 day on May 1, but over the next three weeks was 16-for-63 with no homers and only one extra-base hit, a double, closing out May 21 with a .250 batting average and an anemic .380 slugging percentage. During that span, especially with the team also in the doldrums, at 11-16 and sitting in seventh place, Cardinals manager Eddie Dyer contemplated benching Musial but decided against it because, he told reporters, it might not do any good.11 Star and Times writer Sid Keener blamed the two-year contract the team had given Musial, suggesting it was “unsound business … [as] the incentive to get out and hustle for more money on the following year is not there at the start of the first campaign.”12

Finally, to pull himself out of his funk, Musial, and teammate Enos Slaughter, who was also struggling, hitting only .264 and slugging .403, held a session of private batting practice on May 16. There, Musial seemed to diagnose his own problem. At one point, while Slaughter watched him “hammer ball after ball to faraway places,” Musial stepped away from the plate and declared, “I know what’s been my trouble. I’ve been pressing too hard. I want to get going so much that I’ve been swinging at bad balls instead of picking out the good ones.”13

The two kept at it for an hour, stopping only when Slaughter’s hands started bleeding.14 Musial came to see that he was overstriding and that, as hurlers figured out his new approach, they were pitching him outside more often and his insistence on pulling the ball was resulting in weak grounders to second. He began making the necessary adjustments and hit .321 with a .429 OBP and .528 slugging average from then until the end of May. In early June, Post-Dispatch sportswriter Bob Broeg, declared, “Musial again is Musial. And that means free-swinging, earth shaking destruction.”15

Musial remained hot at the plate, hitting .339 for the month, briefly flirting with .300 for the season in the last week before going into a brief cold spell. Still, he earned a spot in the starting lineup for the National League All-Star team, in center field; in the balloting, fans gave him the third highest vote total of any player, behind only Jackie Robinson and Ralph Kiner. Musial went 3-for-4 and hit his second All-Star Game home run, though it was not enough to push the NL to a win, as they lost 11-7, in part because of five errors.

Musial went 2-for-4 in the opener on July 22, including a home run off Preacher Roe in the first inning, as the Cardinals won 3-1. While he went hitless in the second game, he walked twice, including leading off the ninth inning to start a rally that pushed St. Louis to a 5-4 victory. In the third game, he went 4-for-5, hitting for the cycle in a 14-1 romp that moved the team to first place. In the final game, which ended in a 4-4 tie, Musial went 3-for-4 with a double, a triple, and an RBI. When it ended, his average stood at .304 and would never dip below .300 the rest of the year.

Still, by the standards Musial had set for his career since he came into the league in September 1941, his numbers were unimpressive. He was far below his lifetime average of .348 and was only the third-best hitter on his own team, behind Slaughter’s .322 and Red Schoendienst’s .320. Beyond this, any hopes of repeating as batting champion seemed remote, as he trailed Jackie Robinson’s league-leading average by nearly 60 points.

Once the calendar turned over to August, Musial set about trying to close both gaps, as the Cardinals also went to work to widen what was, at the end of July, a 1½-game lead over Brooklyn. By the end of the first week, when Musial went 13-for-27, his average was up to .313, as the Cards went 5-2. While Musial gained slightly on Robinson, who went 12-for-35 that week, the Dodgers were even hotter than St. Louis, going 7-1, moving back into a tie for first. By the end of the month, the Cardinals regained their 1½-game lead and Musial cut the distance between him and Robinson for the batting race nearly in half. Musial’s 46-for-120 month had pushed his average to .321, while Robinson stood at .350 after going 37-for-120.

As it turned out, both chases came down to the season’s final week, which began with the Cardinals leading the Dodgers by a game and Musial trailing Robinson by only 6 points. Both The Man and his team fell short by time the curtain rang down on the 1949 season. The Cardinals ended up dropping four of their final six games, while Brooklyn went 4-2, clinching the pennant with a 10-inning 9-7 victory over Philadelphia on the final Sunday. As for the Cardinals, their final-game 13-5 shellacking of the Cubs was not enough, after the team had dropped the first two contests against Chicago. If there was one key moment that might at least have pushed the club into a playoff with Brooklyn, it came in the fifth inning of the next to last game. With the Cubs leading 3-1, the Cardinals had runners on second and third with no outs after an infield single by Lou Klein, and a double by Musial. After Slaughter popped out to short, Chicago walked Steve Bilko intentionally, loading the bases, but Marty Marion popped to short and Del Rice popped to first, ending the threat.

As for Musial, although he outhit Robinson in the final week – he went 12-for-27 while Robinson collected 6 hits in 18 at-bats – it was still too little, as Robinson ended up winning the only batting title of his Hall of Fame career, with a .342 average, while Musial was runner-up at .338. (Musial’s partner in the semiprivate batting practice earlier in the year, Slaughter, ended in third, at .336.) Musial did lead the league in on-base percentage (.438), hits (207), total bases (382), and doubles (41), while finishing second in home runs (36), behind Kiner, who had 54. Robinson also took home the Most Valuable Player Award (the only one in his career), while Musial was runner-up.

Reflecting on the season, and his disappointment in failing to repeat as batting champion – something no one in the league had done since Rogers Hornsby nearly a quarter of a century earlier – Musial focused on his poor start, which he blamed on trying to hit the long ball after just missing out on the Triple Crown the season before.

“There’s no doubt I threw myself off stride by swinging for home runs in the spring,” he told The Sporting News for a November retrospective on his season. “I lost my timing, the pitchers began getting me to nibble at bad pitches and it wasn’t until the second half that I got back in the groove.”16 After acknowledging that it was only when he began “meeting the ball on the nose and driving it to all fields,” he vowed, “That’s the way I’m going to approach this hitting business next year. … I’m not the hottest spring hitter, I know, but I’m hoping to get a good start to build an early average for a big season.”17

As it turned out, Musial made good on that pledge: No longer striving for home runs, he hit over .400 for the first two months of 1950, flipping the script on Robinson and winning the batting title over the Dodgers great. He went on to repeat in 1951 and 1952, and won his last batting title in 1957. Sadly, however, the 1949 season was the nearest Musial and the Cardinals came to winning the pennant over the last 14 seasons of his career.

JOE SCHUSTER is the author of the baseball novel The Might Have Been, which was a finalist for the CASEY Award for 2012. He has published more than 500 articles, essays, and reviews in national and regional magazines as well as in metropolitan newspapers, and has contributed nearly 30 articles to several SABR publications, including One-Win Wonders, One-Hit Wonders, 20-Game Losers, and Sweet 60: the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates, among others. He retired from Webster University in 2018 after teaching for a third of a century. Married, he is the father of five children and three grandchildren – all of whom live and breathe Cardinals baseball.

SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author referred to Baseball-Reference, Stathead, and the SABR BioProject.

NOTES

1 “4218 of Donora’s 15,000 Persons Affected by Smog, Survey Shows,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 7, 1949: 1.

2 “Stan Musial’s Father Dies at St. Louis,” Pittsburgh Press, December 20, 1948: 26.

3 “Texan Charged with Impersonating Musial,” St. Louis Star and Times, February 10, 1949: 28.

4 “Stan Musial Poseur Released from Jail,” Biloxi (Mississippi) Sun Herald, February 22, 1949: 8.

5 J. Roy Stockton, “Wind Aids Yankees in 3-1 Victory,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 4, 1949: 3B.

6 W. Vernon Tietjen, “Stan Musial in Slump as Club Leaves Florida,” St. Louis Star and Times, April 6, 1949: 26.

7 W. Vernon Tietjen, “Cards Appear ‘Tired of It All’ as Exhibition Tour Ends,” St. Louis Star and Times, April 14, 1949: 32.

8 W. Vernon Tietjen, “Cardinals in Night Debut Hope to Keep Cubs in the Dark,” St. Louis Star and Times, April 23, 1949: 6.

9 “Cardinals, Back Home, Win Game,” Mount Vernon (Ilinois) Register-News, April 23, 1949: 8.

10 J. Roy Stockton, “Meet the New Musial, He’s the Slugger Type,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 27, 1949: 18.

11 Bob Broeg, “Cards-Dodgers Game Postponed; Young Players Give Birds a Lift,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 10, 1949: 12.

12 Sid Keener, “Musial’s Slump,” St. Louis Star and Times, May 18, 1949: 25.

13 Ray J. Gillespie, “Musial and Slaughter, Desperate for Hits, Hold Their First Batting Practice,” St. Louis Star and Times, May 17, 1949: 20.

14 Gillespie.

15 Bob Broeg, “Musial, Pollett Win One at Midnight,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 3, 1949: 32.

16 Bob Broeg, “Stan Lost Batting Title in Pennsylvania Parks,” The Sporting News, November 16, 1949: 4.

17 “Stan Lost Batting Title in Pennsylvania Parks.”

Stan Musial stands with three of his National League teammates in the 1949 All-Star Game at Ebbets Field. Also pictured are Gil Hodges, Jackie Robinson, and Raph Kiner. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

Tensions were high when Jack Roosevelt Robinson took the field on April 15, 1947; the integration of major-league baseball had arrived. For many of the White players, playing with or against a Black player was contrary to their beliefs. So, it was no surprise that rumors had circulated that one team was planning to boycott games against the Brooklyn Dodgers. That team was the St. Louis Cardinals.

The story goes that Cardinals President Sam Breadon had heard rumblings about some of his players planning to strike in defiance of Robinson’s ascension to the National League. Upon hearing this, Breadon hastily flew to New York and contacted NL President Ford Frick for fear of reprisal. At the same time, the Cardinals’ team doctor, Robert Hyland, got wind of the strike and shared the story with a friend and sportswriter, Rud Rennie, over many libations. Not wanting to out his friend as a source, Rennie gave the tip to his boss, Stanley Woodward, who published the scoop in the New York Herald Tribune on May 9, 1947.1

Immediately after the story was published, Cardinals manager Eddie Dyer denied the rumors of a boycott. Enos Slaughter, a Southerner from Roxboro, North Carolina, vehemently denied any plans for a strike. Reigning NL MVP Stan Musial said, “There was definitely racist talk, but it wasn’t going to amount to nothing.”2

Whether or not a boycott was planned has been discussed elsewhere.3 While Cardinals pitcher Freddy Schmidt later recalled a letter being shared around the clubhouse advising players to boycott,4 other accounts from Cardinals officials and players, including the 26-year-old Musial, suggest that the talk among players could have been interpreted as setting the groundwork for a strike.

After the story was published, Musial’s immediate reaction to the boycott allegation is difficult to find.5 However, he reflected on it later in life, documented in an interview conducted by Roger Kahn in 1993 and later in George Vecsey’s biography of Musial, published in 2011.

Vecsey dedicates a chapter to the alleged strike and does a good job of summarizing the accounts and timelines. He includes a 1997 quote from Musial denying the allegations: “We never had a meeting. We never talked about having any organized boycott. … We’ll all tell you; we never had any thoughts in that direction, whatsoever.”6 Musial added that the preconceptions New Yorkers had about St. Louis (they were the closest “Southern” team in the National League) and having Southern players may have led to the assumption that a boycott against a Black player could have been planned by the Cardinals. “I think they felt that we were, you know, we’re a Southern town in a way.”7 Musial further said, “You (might have) heard some mumbles before that about playing against Robinson, but when the time came to play, why, everybody played, and it was really nothing. We didn’t have any special meeting, or anybody give us any special talk.”

In the interview with Kahn, Musial was more open about the alleged strike and admitted that he heard “rough and racist talk” in the clubhouse and justified it as a byproduct of baseball at the time. “First of all, everybody has racial feelings. We don’t admit it. We aren’t proud of it. But it’s there. And this is big league baseball, not an English Tea, and ballplayers make noise. So, I heard the words, and I knew there were some feelings behind the words, but I didn’t take it seriously. That was baseball.” He went on to say that the thought the racial talk was “just hot air.”8

But when push came to shove, Musial admitted to Kahn that it was out of the question to express to his teammates his feelings on race, Robinson, and integration of baseball being long overdue. “Saying all that would have been a speech, and I didn’t know how to make speeches. Saying it to older players, that was beyond me.”13 This suggests that his role in any alleged strike was more nonparticipatory than that of a staunch opposer.

There is a case to be made that the alleged strike by the Cardinals was unsubstantiated and nothing more than vile locker-room threats. If a strike had been really planned and carried out, Musial would have likely opposed it but may not have stopped it. What appears to have been a mix of hasty escalations by the Cardinals brass and claims from eager sportswriters morphed into another stain on major-league baseball’s sordid past.

NICK MALIAN lives with his wife, daughter, and son in LaSalle, Ontario, where he was born and raised. Growing up in a border city, he idolized Detroit Tigers greats Cecil Fielder and Alan Trammell. However, as an impressionable 12-year-old, his allegiance shifted to the New York Yankees after their 1996 World Series victory. Nick is a pharmacist by day, an amateur chef by night, and found time to earn an Executive MBA degree at the Ivey Business School in London, Ontario, Canada.

SOURCES

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

NOTES

1 Stanley Woodward, “Views of Sport,” New York Herald Tribune, May 9, 1947, reprinted in The Sporting News, May 21, 1947: 4

2 Roger Kahn, The Era, 1947-1957: When the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers Ruled the World (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 56

3 Warren Corbett, The ‘Strike’ Against Jackie Robinson: Truth or Myth?” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Spring 2017, https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-strike-against-jackie-robinson-truth-or-myth/, accessed April 2024.

4 George Vecsey, Stan Musial: An American Life (New York: Ballantine Books, 2011), 155.

5 Musial was being treated for acute appendicitis at the time.

6 Vecsey, 156-157.

7 James Giglio, Musial: From Stash to Stan the Man (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001), 154. This argument continued into the 1990s and culminated in an argument between Cardinals beat writer Bob Broeg and Roger Kahn at a dinner with Musial. Kahn believed that Broeg was not sensitive enough to racial matters and that the Cardinals did not do enough to support Robinson. Broeg contended that the situation was not black and white.

8 Kahn, 56.

9 Arnold Rampersad, Jackie Robinson, A Biography (New York: Random House, 1997), 178. There is scant documentation about their relationship. In one instance, Robinson once referred to Musial as “a very fine fellow” during an interview with Jack Buck in 1962. And Rampersad in his biography of Robinson wrote that Musial was always friendly with Jackie Robinson. Robinson told Kahn that Musial was a nice guy but when it came to Robinson breaking the color barrier, Musial did not hurt nor help him.

10 Musial’s mother was born in New York to Austrian-Hungarian parents and his father was born in Poland.

11 He played against Buddy Griffey, father and grandfather of Ken Griffey Sr. and Jr.

12 Vecsey, 155.

13 Kahn, 56.

Cardinals general manager Frank Lane nearly traded Stan Musial to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1956. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

It seems almost unfathomable to think of Stan Musial as anything but a St. Louis Cardinal.

Few players are as completely intertwined with the history and identity of a team as Musial is with the Cardinals. A statue of him in his unique batting stance (White Sox pitcher Ted Lyons, who saw Musial play in the Navy, likened it to “a kid looking around the corner to see if the cops are coming”)1 stands in front of the current iteration of Busch Stadium, with an inscription from Commissioner Ford Frick’s remarks on the occasion of Musial’s retirement in 1963: “Here stands baseball’s perfect warrior; here stands baseball’s perfect knight.”2

Musial’s entire career came with the Cardinals, a sign of his popularity and talent as much as a remnant of the days where the reserve clause meant that no player left a team unless the team wanted him gone. And in 1956, at least one person wanted him gone from St. Louis. He happened to be the general manager.

“Except, apparently, for the boldness of my business partner, Biggie Garagnani, and the intervention of August A. Busch Jr., I would have been sent to the Philadelphia Phillies for Robin Roberts at the trading deadline,” Musial recalled in his autobiography.3

After dominance in the 1940s, when they won three World Series and appeared in another, the Cardinals fell from their perch as one of the National League’s top teams in the 1950s. In that decade, the “Boys of Summer” – the Brooklyn Dodgers – were in full ascent, while the New York Giants won two pennants and a World Series as well. After their World Series win over the Boston Red Sox in 1946, the Cardinals finished second in the National League in each of the next three years, and then slid further down into the standings in the 1950s, which also marked a transitional period in the team’s ownership.

Sam Breadon, on whose watch the Cardinals had become one of the best teams in the National League, sold his interests in 1947 to Fred Saigh. In turn, Saigh was forced to sell the team in 1953, following a conviction for income-tax evasion. The team’s new owner was the Anheuser-Busch brewery, fronted by president August A. “Gussie” Busch Jr. The Cardinals had never had a general manager until Busch installed brewery executive Richard Meyer in the position.

Meyer, who like Busch had considerable business experience but little baseball experience, served in the role for two years before the Cardinals hired Frank Lane, a longtime sports executive who’d gained credit for turning around the Chicago White Sox in his only other stint as a general manager.

Lane was a man of action, described as an indefatigable force of nature. “Frank Lane is as restful as a hurricane,” wrote Arthur Daley of the New York Times.4 “Probably the most exciting chapter in the history of St. Louis baseball is about to be enacted,” J.G. Taylor Spink of The Sporting News said on Lane’s arrival.5

Lane had played minor-league baseball in his native Ohio (for a Class-D team owned by future President Warren G. Harding) and football for the Dayton Triangles, one of the initial teams in what became the NFL. His physical fitness belied his limitations as an athlete,6 and he moved into officiating, where he distinguished himself in college football and basketball, and then into the front office. He’d worked for the Reds and the Yankees before being named president of the American Association in 1946. In October 1948 he was named general manager of the White Sox, taking over a job viewed by many as radioactive, as enfant terrible Chuck Comiskey, Charles Comiskey’s grandson, tried to wrest control from his sister, Dorothy Comiskey Rigney, who was the team’s majority owner.

“It was the one job in baseball nobody wanted, and Frank was warned of the problems: Chicago, then in eighth place, had never drawn a million people in its history; the White Sox were financially impoverished,” Mark Kram wrote in a 1968 profile of Lane for Sports Illustrated.7 But Lane took the job, and immediately took action. He waived or traded 38 of the 40 players on the team within a year of taking over and made 253 deals for a total of 341 players – an average of three trades a month by Lane’s own calculation. But he laid the groundwork for the Go-Go Sox of the 1950s before his resignation in September 1955 amid rumors of a feud. “I left Chicago because young Chuck was breathing down my neck a little harder than I liked,” Lane said in a Saturday Evening Post story the following summer.8 Comiskey, for his part, called stories of a feud overblown and said shortly after Lane’s departure for St. Louis, “Believe it or not, I wish Frank had stayed on a couple more years.”9

Lane was given a three-year contract and started making changes right off the bat – literally, as he redesigned the Cardinals’ uniforms, banishing the birds-on-a-bat design seen even today in favor of a script “Cardinals” across the chest. The move was widely excoriated, and lasted only a year.

Again, Lane started wheeling and dealing. He inquired about buying Ernie Banks’ contract from the Cubs but was rebuffed.10 Lane then completed a five-player deal, sending Harvey Haddix, Stu Miller, and Ben Flowers to the Phillies for Murry Dickson and Herm Wehmeier.11 Solly Hemus also went to Philadelphia, for Bobby Morgan. Bill Virdon, the previous year’s rookie of the year, was traded to Pittsburgh for Dick Littlefield and Bobby Del Greco. Then Alex Grammas was traded with Joe Frazier to the Reds for Chuck Harmon.

“I didn’t come to St. Louis to raise red roses or tell after-dinner stories or take the tenor lead in Hearts and Flowers,” Lane said not long after the trades were made. “I came here to win a pennant, and that’s exactly what I intend to do, any way I can.”12

In the short term, the Cardinals were contending neck-and-neck with the Dodgers as May turned to June on the calendar. The trade deadline loomed on June 15. The Cardinals needed pitching – something Lane had pointed out when he took the job the previous fall – and Lane was ready to make a deal to bring arguably the best pitcher in the major leagues to St. Louis. And all it would cost him was Stan Musial.

Shortly before the trade deadline, Garagnani, a well-known St. Louis restaurateur even before taking on Musial as a partner, heard a rumor from a reputable source that Musial was on the verge of being traded straight up for Phillies pitcher Robin Roberts, who’d been a 20-game winner in each of the previous six seasons, and led the majors in wins in each of the previous four.13 A call to J.G. Taylor Spink, the editor of The Sporting News, confirmed the details. Garagnani then tried to call Busch, who’d previously stated that Musial was untouchable. Unable to reach Busch, Garagnani tried to reach his associates at the brewery, one of whom said, “Lane’s moving so fast, we can’t keep up with him.”14

Garagnani took the bold step of telling team officials – before consulting with Musial – that Musial would retire before accepting a trade. (Musial said in his autobiography that Garagnani’s read on the situation was correct, but that if he really had to think about it, with his 3,000-hit milestone looming, he might have reported to Philadelphia.)

When word reached Busch about the proposed deal, he felt obligated to step in. “When the Musial trade rumors persisted last year I made up my mind they had to be stopped,” he told the Saturday Evening Post. “To my way of thinking, Stan was, is and will continue to be a St. Louis institution.” Busch then commissioned the brewery’s PR firm to draft a statement that said, simply, “At no time has a trade for Stan Musial been considered.” Lane suggested he should release the statement. “I don’t give a damn who makes it,” Busch retorted, “so long as it’s made.”15

The Musial deal was dead,16 but Lane couldn’t be stopped. Three days later, on June 14, the day before the deadline, Red Schoendienst, another fan favorite who’d played with Musial since the 1940s, was traded to the New York Giants.17 “The telephone receiver had to be taken off the hook at my home,” Busch recalled.18 After the Schoendienst deal, all of Lane’s trades were subject to Busch’s approval.

The Cardinals finished 76-78-2 in 1956, a distant fourth in the National League (although an eight-win improvement from the previous season). The following February, at a dinner for the Knights of the Cauliflower Ear, a St. Louis sportsmen’s club started by Busch’s father (August Anheuser Busch Sr.), Gussie said, “I expect the Cardinals to come damn close to winning a pennant in 1957, and 1958 is going to be a sure thing, or Frank Lane will be out on his rump.”19 Busch and Lane both said later that the remarks were not made in total seriousness, but contemporary coverage suggested that Busch’s patience with Lane was running thin. Lane himself tested the waters by asking for a contract extension but received a three-word telegram from Busch: “Kiss my ass.”20

Lane’s departure from St. Louis kept him from consummating one more deal, sending third baseman (and future NL MVP) Ken Boyer to the Phillies for Richie Ashburn – a stroke of good fortune for the Cardinals.22

Musial finished out his career with St. Louis, but the idea of his returning to his hometown Pittsburgh Pirates was broached at least once more, in 1960. Benched by Hemus, who’d returned to manage the team, Musial was still looking for a way to prove himself. Before that year’s trade deadline, Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh inquired, and was told Musial might be available, but general manager Joe L. Brown said he couldn’t make an offer for fear of putting Lane’s successor, Bing Devine, in a bad spot. The only way they’d take on Musial was if he was released. Musial said in his autobiography that he considered asking for his release but decided against it.23

After retiring as a player in 1963, Musial became the Cardinals vice president but stepped in to become the general manager in 1967. The manager was his old friend and roommate Schoendienst. The two got into the team bus at the hotel to go to the ballpark when Schoendienst heard a familiar voice. It was Lane.

“I never saw Stan move so fast in my life,” Schoendienst recalled in his autobiography. “He sprang up from his seat and walked to where Lane was sitting. ‘Get the hell out of here,’ he ordered Lane. ‘Get off our bus.’”24

VINCE GUERRIERI is a journalist and author in the Cleveland area. He’s the secretary-treasurer of the Jack Graney SABR Chapter, and has contributed to the SABR BioProject, the SABR Games Project, and several SABR anthologies, serving as an editor for the book on the 1945 Cleveland Buckeyes. Additionally, he’s written about baseball history for a variety of publications, including Ohio Magazine, Cleveland Magazine, Smithsonian, and Defector. He can be reached at vaguerrieri@gmail.com or found on Twitter @vinceguerrieri.

NOTES

1 The Sporting News, August 20, 1947: 13. Quoted in Lyons’ SABR bio.

2 Larry Schwartz, “Musial Was Gentleman Killer,” ESPN. https://www.espn.com/sportscentury/features/00016375.html.

3 Stan Musial, as told to Bob Broeg, “The Man’s” Own Story (New York: Doubleday, 1964), 177.

4 Arthur Daley, “Sports of the Times: Baseball’s Man in Motion,” New York Times, January 4, 1961: 37.

5 J.G. Taylor Spink. “‘Tradin’ Man’ Will Shake Up St. Louis,” The Sporting News, October 12, 1955: 1.

6 Famously, he was nearly blind, and well into his old age was too vain to wear glasses, finally opting for prescription sunglasses.

7 Mark Kram, “Would You Trade With This Man?” Sports Illustrated, August 26, 1968. https://vault.si.com/vault/1968/08/26/would-you-trade-with-this-man.

8 Frank Lane, as told to Roger Kahn, “I’m Here to Win a Pennant,” Saturday Evening Post, June 23, 1956.

9 “Feud With Lane Overplayed, Chuck Tells Luncheon Group,” The Sporting News, October 26, 1955, 2.

10 August A. Busch Jr., as told to Milton Gross, “Baseball’s Got Me,” Saturday Evening Post, May 18, 1957. Busch, who’d made overtures to the Dodgers about Gil Hodges before hiring Lane, said Lane went as high as $500,000 for Banks, but Busch, a multimillionaire, was told, “Mr. Wrigley needs a half a million dollars as much as you do.”

11 Dickson had been sold from the Cardinals to the Pirates in 1949, a period when Saigh was attempting to buy out partner Bob Hannegan. A potential sale of Musial to the Pirates was discussed but never consummated. Bob Broeg, “The Man Reveals Near Miss as ’48 Bucco,” The Sporting News, April 6, 1963: 29.

12 Lane, “I’m Here to Win a Pennant.”

13 In 1953 he had been tied with Warren Spahn. In 1954 he was tied with Bob Lemon and Early Wynn.

14 Musial, The Man’s Own Story, 178.

15 Busch, “Baseball’s Got Me.” Lane, for his part, denied ever attempting to trade Musial, saying in Kram’s Sports Illustrated story that it was “one of the great myths of baseball.”

16 It’s an interesting counterfactual to wonder how the Cardinals would have made out had the deal gone down. Roberts led the league in losses in the next two seasons, and never won 20 games in a season again in his career.

17 In his memoirs, Schoendienst said he found out about the deal on the radio.

18 Busch, “Baseball’s Got Me.”

19 Bob Broeg, “Outfield Gone, Pennant Must Come, Bush Warns Lane,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 13, 1957: 24. The quote has been variously stated as “out on his ear” or occasionally, “out on his ass.”

20 Bob Vandenburg, Frantic Frank Lane: Baseball’s Ultimate Wheeler-Dealer (Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland, 2013), 77.

21 Joe Maxse, “The Boys of Past Indian Summers,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 3, 1988: 50.

22 Robert L. Burnes, “The Bench Warmer,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 4, 1958: 21.

23 Musial, The Man’s Own Story, 216.

24 Red Schoendienst with Rob Rains, Red: A Baseball Life (Champaign, Illinois: Sports Publishing, 1998), 83.

Stan Musial looks forward to another game at the Polo Grounds. Musial smashed 49 home runs at that ballpark, more than he hit at any other opposition park. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

Jan Finkel begins his SABR biography of Stan Musial with a quote from the great broadcaster Vin Scully: “How good was Stan Musial? He was good enough to take your breath away.”2 For more than 20 years, with a bat in his hands, Musial left us gasping for breath again and again and again.1

The On-Base Plus Slugging (OPS) statistic combines getting on base with power, offering insights into a batter’s offensive potential to help his team win.3 More recently, Wins Above Replacement (WAR) measures the number of wins the player added to the team above what a replacement player would add.4 A WAR value can be scaled for a single season or be used to compare players over their entire careers. When analyzing Stan Musial’s batting statistics to understand winning, we gain more insight by studying his types of base hits (not just his OPS or WAR).

First, the obvious. A deserved first-ballot Hall of Famer, Musial is sixth in career Offensive Wins Above Replacement (125.1).5 The Offensive WAR career list names the best of the best batters. The only five batters above Musial on the list are Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Barry Bonds, Willie Mays, and Henry Aaron. Great company.

It is easy to admire Musial’s career statistics: a .331 batting average, a .417 on-base percentage, and a .559 slugging percentage. He ranks fourth in career base hits (3,630), split amazingly with 1,815 hits at home and 1,815 on the road. That’s consistency. His 1,377 extra-base hits,6 fourth-best of any player in history, reinforce his legacy of power. He led the majors in seven different seasons in extra-base hits.7 In fact, Musial was in the majors’ top 10 of extra-base hits in every season from 1943 to 1957 except one (he did not play in 1945, due to military service). It was precisely his ability to produce extra-base hits that correlates directly with more wins.

Musial is one of only 15 players in the history of the game to have collected 100 or more extra-base hits in a single season.8 He ranks tied for sixth-most all-time, when he had 103 extra-base hits in 1948. When he accomplished that rare feat, he was only the 10th player in history to have at least 100 extra-base hits in a single season, and he was the first since 1937 (when Hank Greenberg broke the century barrier). Musial missed winning the Triple Crown by one home run,9 but he did win his third (of three) National League Most Valuable Player Award that season. He also placed second in the NL MVP balloting four more times. In 1950 he was runner-up to a pitcher, indicating that Musial was presumably the best hitter in the National League.

Back to how could Musial influence a game offensively. In 1948 he had 230 hits, giving him a percentage of extra-base hits of 0.4478 (close to one-half). How can we think of this in a practical sense? If Musial was 2-for-4 in a game in 1948, we could expect one of those hits to be for extra bases – a double, triple, or home run. With a runner on base, there is a high chance that the runner could score (maybe from first on a double but much more likely if a runner was on second or third). In addition, Musial would then put himself in scoring position (if he didn’t hit a home run), waiting to be driven home by his teammates, leading to another run. We know that in his career he scored 1,949 runs and drove in 1,951, creating a run in every 5.6 at-bats. Again, that’s consistency.

Musial had two other seasons with 90 or more extra-base hits. In 1949 he had 90 extra-base hits as part of his 207 total hits (43.49 percent). He also hit for the cycle on July 24, 1949, banging out three different extra-base hits with a single, while scoring three times and adding four RBIs. Four seasons later, in 1953, Musial had 92 extra-base hits in 200 total safeties (46 percent). For his career, Musial’s percentage of extra-base hits is 0.3793.10

Musial’s career slugging percentage of .559 translates roughly into five total bases for every nine at-bats, or, in a simpler way, at least one base in every two at-bats. His career percentage of extra-base hits (0.3793) means he would get at least a double in every third base hit. From a power point of view, Musial drove in a run, or got into a position to be driven in, with every third base hit over his entire career.

When comparing players with a combined batting average of at least .300, an on-base average of at least .400, and a slugging percentage of at least .500 (in the same season), Musial ranks second-most in major-league history, with 15 such seasons.11 The last time he accomplished this triple-stat mark was in the 1962 season (.330 BA, .416 OBP, .508 SLG), when Musial was 41 years old. For comparison, the 15 seasons stand three behind Ted Williams and one ahead of both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, who each had 14 such seasons. Since Musial’s performance spans a 22-season career, interrupted by military service, all we can say is, “Wow! This is consistently impressive!”

We can combine Musial’s career batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, and percentage of extra-base hits to define a typical series for him. Hypothetically, if Musial got 15 at-bats in a four-game series, he would reach base at least six times (with at least five hits), with about two extra-base hits, each leading to a potential run or two. He would drive in two to three runs and score two to three himself. In every series. For every season. Obviously, his numbers were higher during his peak seasons. What manager wouldn’t want that consistency?

Finally – just imagine! – if we could put nine Stan Musials batting on the same team, that team would win 77.9 percent of its games.12 Musial’s Offensive Win Percentage ranks 15th all-time (tied with Tris Speaker), out of every baseball player who ever swung a bat in the big leagues. The only other players above Musial on this list who played in roughly the same era as he did were Boston’s Williams (his career Offensive Win Percentage was 85.7 percent) and New York’s Mickey Mantle (80.4 percent). Babe Ruth is first on the list (his 85.8 percent edges out Williams), and Barry Bonds is fourth (81.5 percent), but nine of the top 14 players come from the 1910s-1930s (representing some of the game’s greatest hitters – Ruth, Oscar Charleston, Rogers Hornsby, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Turkey Stearnes, Ty Cobb, Mule Suttles, Lou Gehrig, and Jimmie Foxx).13 That means that for the entirety of his 22-season career, Stan the Consistent Man Musial contributed to his team’s winning more games than all but two other players, out of the thousands who played in that stretch of time. That should take your breath away.

MIKE HUBER is professor emeritus of mathematics at Muhlenberg College, where he routinely taught a course titled Reasoning With Sabermetrics. He also sponsored several undergraduate research projects involving simulating and predicting rare events in baseball, such as pitching a no-hitter or hitting for the cycle. He joined SABR in 1996 and enjoys writing and fact-checking for the Games Project.

NOTES

1 Jan Finkel, “Stan Musial,” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/stan-musial/. In his bio, Finkel cites a quotation from a Paul Warburton article that appeared in the 2001 SABR Baseball Research Journal. See Paul Warburton, “Stan Musial’s Spectacular 1948 Season,” Baseball Research Journal. 30 (2001), 99-104.

2 Finkel.

3 John Thorn and Pete Palmer, The Hidden Game of Baseball: A Revolutionary Approach to Baseball and Its Statistics (New York: Doubleday, 1984).

4 See https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/WAR_career.shtml.

5 Musial is tied with Tris Speaker and Ted Williams for sixth place in Offensive WAR. See https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/WAR_bat_career.shtml. When fielding statistics are included (giving career Position Player WAR), Musial ranks eighth; Tris Speaker and Honus Wagner move ahead of him. Williams dropped to 11th-best.

6 Of Musial’s 475 home runs, 252 came at home while 223 came away, in 12 different ballparks. See Finkel for more details.

7 Musial led the majors in extra-base hits in 1943, 1944, 1946, 1948, 1949, 1950, and 1953.

8 See https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/XBH_season.shtml. As of the end of the 2023 season.

9 In 1948 Musial had 46 doubles, 18 triples, and 39 home runs – 103 extra-base hits. His 39 homers were one behind both Ralph Kiner and Johnny Mize, who led the majors.

10 In fairness, the percentage of extra-base hits statistic does not take any pitching or ballpark factors into account.

11 See https://www.statmuse.com/mlb/ask/most-seasons-with.300-batting-average.400-on-base-percentage-and.500-slugging-percentage. Accessed April 2024.

12 See https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/offensive_winning_perc_career.shtml. According to Baseball-Reference, this statistic “uses the Pythagorean win pct formula with the player’s RC/G for runs scored and the league’s R/9 as runs allowed.”

13 Dan Brouthers makes the list as the only nineteenth-century player above Musial. As of the first month of the 2024 season, active player Mike Trout jumped to the 13th spot on the list (78.9 percent).

Stan Musial doubled, then scored by sliding past catcher Ernie Lombardi on Walker Cooper’s sixth-inning single at Braves Field on September 16, 1942. The Cardinals won, 6-2. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

One of the most celebrated facets of Cardinals historical lore is Stan Musial’s remarkable home/away symmetry of career base hits: 1,815 at home and 1,815 away. In his book Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball, George Will found this phenomenon significant: “Stan Musial may have been baseball’s most consistent hitter, at least as measured by this stunning statistic.”1 On the perimeter of its current Busch Stadium, the Cardinals placed 3,630 bricks in the ballpark’s western boundary sidewalk, evenly divided by the location of Musial’s statue (and labeled HOME and AWAY on either side), to invite visitors to draw the same conclusion, that he didn’t care where he played: Bat met ball with equally positive results. Lee Allen, then the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s historian, contributed a career statistical summary as an appendix to Musial’s autobiography, in which he offered a more agnostic interpretation: “Through a fantastic coincidence, Musial made exactly as many hits on the road, 1,815, as he did in St. Louis.”2 Which is it, then, a statistic that provides a window on The Man’s remarkable consistency and focus, unwavering in the face of diverse playing environments? Or merely a happy statistical accident?

The question is easily answered, unromantically favoring Allen’s prosaic interpretation. The Donora Greyhound recorded a nontrivial home/away difference in batting average: .336 at home and .326 on the road. How was this possible, to produce the same number of hits? Did he sit out more home games, thereby coming to the plate less often? No, actually Musial drew a staggering 14.6 percent more bases on balls at home than away (857 versus 748). As a result, his fairly even division of plate appearances (6,332 home to 6,386 away, the difference likely reflecting fewer ninth-inning plate appearances at home) turned into a significantly uneven split of at-bats: 5,402 versus 5,569. With that difference in the denominator for calculating batting average, 1,815 hits at home produced .336, and the same number on the road .326, for a 3.1 percent advantage.

Other career statistics reveal further home advantages in Musial’s performance: on-base proportion .427 versus .407 (4.9 percent better), slugging .582 and .537 (+8.4 percent), and consequently OPS 1.009 versus .944 (+6.9 percent). But he indeed hit very well both at home and on the road. A lifelong Musial fan can understandably feel guilty about drawing attention to these differences, so perhaps there is salvation in discovering that his home/away statistical splits still were more symmetrical and consistent than his contemporaries’. Were they?

MUSIAL’S HOME/AWAY SPLITS COMPARED TO HIS CONTEMPORARIES

To quantify offensive productivity, we employed OPS (on-base plus slugging), an imperfect but useful and universally understood statistic. We used adjusted OPS, written OPS+, to normalize a player’s OPS against a season’s offensive context and to correct for his home ballpark characteristics, thus enabling more accurate comparisons among players and seasons. (A value of 100 matches the league average.) And when we explore Baseball-Reference.com’s splits for each player’s career and individual seasons, we find the highly useful tOPS+ (with the catchy name “OPS for split relative to Player’s Total OPS”) to quantify the magnitude of performance difference between, say, home vs. away, facing right-handed vs. left-handed pitchers, month of the season, batting order position, and so forth. A perfectly symmetrical scenario for a binary split would produce tOPS+ values as 100 and 100, e.g., exactly the same at home as away; whereas a slight difference might be, say, 103 and 97, and a more extreme pair of values 110 and 90. For simplicity’s sake I present only Musial’s Home tOPS+ values.

Musial’s career Home tOPS+ is 107. At first blush, that seems close enough to 100 to suggest that his legendary offensive neutrality regarding a game’s location is indeed supported, albeit imperfectly. But testing that premise requires comparing Musial’s tOPS+ to overall major leaguers’ splits (not including contemporary Jim Crow-era Black ball) for his primary seasons, 1942-1963, omitting 1941 (he played only 12 games) and 1945 (his World War II service). Over that time, baseball’s overall Home tOPS+ was 105. That suggests that “The Man,” with his Home tOPS+ of 107, actually favored playing at home vs. on the road even somewhat more than did his contemporaries, on average.

Might elite batsmen show home/away splits that are consistently different from ordinary players, and thus serve as an alternative basis for peer comparison? Fifteen elite hitters who overlapped Musial’s career by at least six seasons were selected: Henry Aaron, Ernie Banks, Roy Campanella, Joe DiMaggio, Ralph Kiner, Ted Kluszewski, Mickey Mantle, Ed Mathews, Willie Mays, Johnny Mize, Bill Nicholson, Frank Robinson, Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, and Ted Williams. Remarkably, they too averaged 105 for Home tOPS+, as we found for the majors as a whole. So Musial still appears to have favored his home ballpark more than most players.

Musial often is compared with Williams, as the two finest hitters in their respective leagues at that time. Their two career Home tOPS+ values are close, 107 vs. 106. But Teddy Ballgame’s splits are more “normal,” with a 10.1 percent home BA advantage (.361 to .328) and only 4.5 percent for walks (1,031 to 987), resulting in a 12.2 percent home edge in base hits (1,403 to 1,251).

Thus it is clear that Musial actually preferred home cooking even more than did his contemporaries, whether everyday players or his elite peers. He also showed greater than average season-to-season variation in his home/away splits, another mark against his purported offensive consistency.

MUSIAL’S FOUR MOST PECULIAR SEASONS

Four of Stan Musial’s seasons stand out as having markedly anomalous Home tOPS+ values: 1948 (tOPS+ of 83), 1957 (84), 1961 (148), and 1963 (134). Plausible explanations are presented for three of those seasons, leaving only 1957 as an unfathomed mystery.

The 1948 campaign was Musial’s best offensive season, and one of the best in baseball history, featuring an OPS+ of 200 and an offensive WAR of 10.8, as well as 429 total bases and a near-Triple Crown. He began crouching lower and gripping the bat down to the knob, which contributed to his doubling his previous high in home runs (19) to 39.4 So why, in such a successful season, would he have performed so much better on the road? In general, Musial was not prone to either marked hot streaks or prolonged slumps, gauged by eyeballing each season’s game logs. But from May 19 through May 28, 1948, he went on a remarkable tear: 9 games in four road ballparks, 47 plate appearances, 27 times reached base, and 53 total bases (including walks). Unlike today’s schedules, with typically single-digit homestands and road trips, schedules in those days featured very long homestands and road trips: In 1948 the Cardinals had four homestands of 12 to 20 games against 4 to 7 teams each, and four road trips of 12 to 22 games against 5 to 7 teams, plus several shorter stints. Consequently a hot or cold streak of, say, 10 games would very likely fall completely or primarily within one home or away stretch. Therefore even if the streak was caused by factors unrelated to home/away playing environments – such as freedom from injury, seeing the ball well, or locked-in hitting mechanics – it could contribute to a misleadingly high or low home/away split for the season. All that suggests that his tOPS+ of 83 was an artifact of dumb luck regarding the timing of his hot streak, although Musial himself noted in his 1977 autobiography, “If I could have played the 1948 season on the road, I might have hit .400 and ripped the record book apart.”5

The 1957 season, with another away-favoring tOPS+ of 84, featured no such prolonged streak or slump, except that on August 18 to 21 Musial might have been launching a streak (5 games, 22 PA, 14 OB, and 26 total bases) in Milwaukee (normally a tough offensive ballpark for him) and New York (a typically easy ballpark) before he was injured on August 22 in Philadelphia.6 So, contrary to 1948, in 1957 we see a season-long overperformance on the road compared with home; but nowhere in his biographies was this pattern recognized, much less a cause suggested.7

At the opposite end of the split spectrum were 1961 and 1963, with Home tOPS+ values of 148 and 134, sandwiching a more normal split (tOPS+ 107) and successful 1962, with an OPS+ of 137, fourth in the National League at the age of 41. In 1961 he played 61 games at home, with 15 excellent offensive games, vs. a road record of 62 games with only six outstanding games, and no evident streaks or slumps. The 1963 season showed a similar pattern, with 64 home games, of which 14 were excellent; and 58 road games, of which only four were outstanding.8 But Musial’s two autobiographies indirectly address why 1961 and 1963 were so home-skewed: he noted that his greatest challenge in those later years was concentration, which he often found lagging.9 He had been so embarrassed by his 1961 performance (OPS+ 119 and offensive WAR 2.1) that he worked especially hard the following offseason on his conditioning and adapting his stance and swing, thereby producing a gratifying comeback in 1962.10 One may infer that he improved his concentration at the plate throughout the season, both at home and on the road, in order to produce more Musial-like numbers. But it would be natural for concentration to lag again in his final season, especially away from his home fans.11

WRAP-UP

Stan Musial’s base hit home/away symmetry of 1,815 reflects no deep truth about his consistency, but rather is a statistical accident that distracts from the fact that he actually performed better offensively at home, even more so than most of his hard-hitting peers and major-league batters overall. But two mysteries remain, for future creative hypothesizing and analysis: (1) Why did his home/away offensive splits fluctuate so wildly and apparently so randomly during his career?12 And (2) why did he walk so much more frequently at home? Was he more selective at the plate? And/or did he have a superior visual hitting environment in his home ballpark?

CLEM HAMILTON began his career as a professor of horticulture and botany at the University of Washington (Seattle) and Claremont Graduate University in California, conducting fieldwork in Thailand, Panama, Chile, and Costa Rica. From 1992 through 2017 he served as chief executive officer and VP of research at botanical gardens and arboretums in Seattle, Claremont, Chicago, and Cleveland. In his retirement Clem conducts research focused primarily on Black baseball and presents at each year’s SABR Jerry Malloy Conference. He also works for the St. Louis Cardinals as a part-time tour guide, museum docent, photographer, and instructor of energetic third- through sixth-graders. In 2022 he won the Jim Rygelski Research Award from SABR’s Bob Broeg (St. Louis) chapter. Clem resides in St. Louis with his wife, Karen, and in close proximity to his daughter and granddaughter.

SOURCES

Musial’s statistics and those for his contemporary players, including home-away split statistics, are gleaned from Baseball-Reference.com.

NOTES

1 George F. Will, Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball (New York: Macmillan, 1990), 176.

2 Lee Allen’s statistical summary appeared first in Stan Musial, Stan Musial: “The Man’s” Own Story as Told to Bob Broeg (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1964), 315, and then in Stan Musial, The Man Stan: Musial, Then and Now … as Told to Bob Broeg (St. Louis: Bethany Press, 1977), 244.

3 By season, Musial’s Home tOPS+ values are 114 (1942), 99 (1943), 96 (1944), 107 (1946), 100 (1947), 83 (1948), 104 (1949), 113 (1950), 109 (1951), 91 (1952), 121 (1953), 109 (1954), 118 (1955), 121 (1956), 84 (1957), 112 (1958), 104 (1959), 103 (1960), 148 (1961), 107 (1962), and 134 (1963).

4 Musial, Stan Musial, 110; George Vecsey, Stan Musial: An American Life (New York: Ballantine Books, 2011), 201.

5 Musial, The Man Stan, 123. Musial noted also his extraordinary performance at Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds, but that tendency prevailed most years, not just 1948.

6 Musial’s career tOPS+ values were 67 for Milwaukee County Stadium (104 games, 1953-63) and 118 for the Polo Grounds (171 games, 1941-57).

7 Cf. all biographies already cited plus Irv Goodman, Stan The Man Musial (New York: Bartholomew House, 1961); James N. Giglio, Musial: From Stash to Stan the Man (Columbia: University of Missouri, 2001); Wayne Stewart, Stan the Man: The Life and Times of Stan Musial (Chicago: Triumph, 2010); St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Stan Musial: Baseball’s Perfect Knight (St. Louis: St. Louis Post-Dispatch Books, 2010).

8 Musial’s games were evaluated in an ad hoc manner as “excellent” or not in the context of their particular seasons, e.g., (on-base plus total bases) divided by plate appearances greater than or equal to 1.5 in 1961 and 1963, relatively poor seasons; greater than or equal to 1.75 in 1962, a much better season; and greater than or equal to 2.0 in his peak seasons.

9 Cf. Musial, Stan Musial, 244-245 regarding the importance of concentration and the challenge to maintain it; Musial, The Man Stan, 221 regarding his difficulties particularly in 1963. Cf. also Giglio, Musial, 238-239 and Post-Dispatch, Stan Musial, 90.

10 Musial, The Man Stan, 208; Giglio, Musial, 258; and Post-Dispatch, Stan Musial, 97.

11 Post-Dispatch, Stan Musial, 105.

12 Baseball changed significantly during Musial’s career, e.g. the ascent of the slider; as did his approach to hitting, e.g. changing his bat characteristics and swinging more, then less in later years, for power; and his occasional injuries and the effects of aging. Cf. Musial, Stan Musial, 247, 301-306; Musial, The Man Stan, 115-116, 168-169; Giglio, Musial, 252.