How Stan Musial barely escaped a beaning from Johnny Podres

From SABR member Mark Tomasik at RetroSimba on September 21, 2012:

Johnny Podres nearly put a damaging dent into the armor of baseball’s perfect knight.

While researching a recent post about Jon Jay and Cardinals who have been hit by pitches a high number of times, I wondered how often Stan Musial had been struck.

Described by former baseball commisioner Ford Frick as “baseball’s perfect knight,” Musial became a St. Louis icon as much for his good-guy demeanor as for his outstanding baseball ability.

Still, Musial wasn’t immune from wild-armed pitchers and brushback pitches.

He was struck by pitches 53 times in a 22-year big-league career. The pitch that did the most damage was delivered by Podres, a Dodgers left-hander who, like Musial, would be inducted into the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame.

Read the full article here: http://retrosimba.com/2012/09/21/the-story-of-how-stan-musial-barely-escaped-beaning/



Originally published: September 26, 2012. Last Updated: September 26, 2012.