OT: RIP Stan 'The Man' Musial | The Boneyard

OT: RIP Stan 'The Man' Musial

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An icon of major league baseball.

I remember how many kids in Little League used to ape his corkscrew batting stance, firguring that it was the secret to his hitting prowess, which was considerable.
 
"Here stands baseball's perfect warrior. Here stands baseball's perfect knight."

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6090/6107150081_ba1aa8bb2f_m.jpg

24-time All-Star selection.

3-time World Series champion.

3-time MVP.

7-time batting champion.

92.3% first ballot HOFer

Career average of .331

Career RBI total of 1,951

Career homer total of 475, despite missing a full season to WWII

Career hits 3,630 (1,815 at home, 1,815 on the road)

Most hits ever by a player who played for only 1 team.

Member of all-century team
 
A couple of stats and a couple of facts.

He went to bat 3,266 more times than Ted Williams, yet had 13 fewer career strikeouts. In 1948 he hit .376, with 230 hits, 46 doubles, 18 triples, 39 home runs, 135 runs and 131 RBI's.

He married his hometown (Donora, Pa.) sweetheart on his 19th birthday and stayed happily married for 71 years (until she passed away).

Never tossed from a game. No wonder. He never disputed a call. Ever.

In a city and a clubhouse that was openly hostile to the entry of black ballplayers into major league baseball, his support overcame all hostility and helped pave the way for Jackie Robinson and those who followed him.

We will never see another like him, such a combination of excellence on the field and decency away from it.

Stan was The Man. R.I.P.
 
I remember him playing whenever the Cards came to Wrigley.
He was the first HOFer I ever saw play.

As nice a man and as widely respected as anyone in baseball.

"The Man" indeed.
 
Stan and Earl Weaver both gone this weekend.
 
Forgot to add. My dad has a baseball autographed by Stan. My youngest brother got it for him at an event. Dad's favorite player.
 
Permit a couple additional comments about Stan Musial.

He was the first player to be awarded a contract worth $100,000 for a season. His total career earnings were $1.25 million.

I recall him being interviewed on TV (after retirement) and being asked, "When you were playing, there were times you would want to hit a fly, a line drive or a ground ball. How did you do it?" Stan paused for a moment, then very matter-of-factly explained (the obvious): "Well, to hit a fly, I would hit the lower part of the ball; I would hit it in the center for a line drive, and on the top to hit a grounder."

Nothing to it. Just pick the place on a ball coming at you at 90+ mph from 60 feet away and hit it. That's how you bat .331 over 22 years. Next question.
 
I saw the Stan the Man play at Ebbets Field. One of the finest players of all-time and a gentleman. As I recall, the Brooklyn Dodger fans were the ones who gave Musial the nickname "The Man."
 
It's a very sad day for Cardinals fans. Mr. Musial was an extraordinary ballplayer and an even better human being. He lived up to the ideals of my childhood.
 
When I was a boy (I am now in my 70’s), and the game of baseball reigned supreme, there were two givens that were part of the annual “firmament” of the greatest of all sports: In the American League, the Yankees would win or contend for the pennant, and, in the National, Stan Musial would win or contend for the batting title. For most of those years, I was too young and naïve to fully grasp the role of the press in lionizing certain stars, or in their failing to do similarly when other, equally deserving giants of the game played too far away from the bright lights of New York City and its environs. As I grew older, and understood more, I nevertheless was, and remain, shocked by two subsequent developments: baseball would lose its grip on the imagination of large segments of the public, and the unique greatness of Stan Musial would be largely forgotten. The first of these is, I suppose, understandable in an age when the fastest growing “sports” in our country involve people enthusiastically watching other people drive souped-up motor cars very fast around a concrete track and, alas, in the explosion of so-called “professional” wrestling. In the case of Stan “The Man,” while there was never an argument among the cognoscenti who understood the Great Game, he became appallingly undervalued by the larger sporting public in ways that can only be explained by reason of ignorance.

I regret that for young people, who live in an era of tarnished heroes, of performance-enhancing drugs and fictitious girlfriends, there are so few athletes who, by their personal dignity and their on-the-field accomplishments, genuinely deserve the adulation we once accorded to a few superstars of a bygone age, but Stan Musial really was one of those people. Given what has transpired since his departure from the game, his departure from life is all-the-more mourned by all who truly understand.
 
Bigpetunia said:
When I was a boy (I am now in my 70’s), and the game of baseball reigned supreme, there were two givens that were part of the annual “firmament” of the greatest of all sports: In the American League, the Yankees would win or contend for the pennant, and, in the National, Stan Musial would win or contend for the batting title. For most of those years, I was too young and naïve to fully grasp the role of the press in lionizing certain stars, or in their failing to do similarly when other, equally deserving giants of the game played too far away from the bright lights of New York City and its environs. As I grew older, and understood more, I nevertheless was, and remain, shocked by two subsequent developments: baseball would lose its grip on the imagination of large segments of the public, and the unique greatness of Stan Musial would be largely forgotten. The first of these is, I suppose, understandable in an age when the fastest growing “sports” in our country involve people enthusiastically watching other people drive souped-up motor cars very fast around a concrete track and, alas, in the explosion of so-called “professional” wrestling. In the case of Stan “The Man,” while there was never an argument among the cognoscenti who understood the Great Game, he became appallingly undervalued by the larger sporting public in ways that can only be explained by reason of ignorance.

I regret that for young people, who live in an era of tarnished heroes, of performance-enhancing drugs and fictitious girlfriends, there are so few athletes who, by their personal dignity and their on-the-field accomplishments, genuinely deserve the adulation we once accorded to a few superstars of a bygone age, but Stan Musial really was one of those people. Given what has transpired since his departure from the game, his departure from life is all-the-more mourned by all who truly understand.
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W


Well said.I am a little older .Follow The Man since 1942,have never seen or heard of anyone to live up to his sportmanship or fair play.We have lost the best person to ever had played in the Maior leagues.
 
Kibitzer said:
Permit a couple additional comments about Stan Musial.

He was the first player to be awarded a contract worth $100,000 for a season. His total career earnings were $1.25 million.

I recall him being interviewed on TV (after retirement) and being asked, "When you were playing, there were times you would want to hit a fly, a line drive or a ground ball. How did you do it?" Stan paused for a moment, then very matter-of-factly explained (the obvious): "Well, to hit a fly, I would hit the lower part of the ball; I would hit it in the center for a line drive, and on the top to hit a grounder."

Nothing to it. Just pick the place on a ball coming at you at 90+ mph from 60 feet away and hit it. That's how you bat .331 over 22 years. Next question.
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As someone that could barely see the ball, let alone hit it, that is amazing.
 
He was The Man. He was my dad's favorite player. Our family has been Cardinal fans since.....well as long as we've been alive I guess. Assuming Heaven exists, maybe my dad got to meet him. :)
 
Dad bought me a Stan Rawlings glove in 1955 even though we were Yankee diehards. Still have the glove. Saw 1960 All Star game at Yankee Stadium where Number 6 hit his 6th HR. Still a record today I believe.
 
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