Stan Musial

by George Vecsey

  “I’d look into the gym and said, ‘God almighty, there he is, he’s playing with the St. Louis Cardinals, he’s in the prime of his life, and he’s supposed to be somebody special, but he’s a regular person,’ ” Cecconi said.

  Now Musial was perched on the edge of a lower bunk, chatting with the Pitt players.

  That afternoon, in Brooklyn, the Cardinals had won the playoff against the Dodgers, and now they were en route to their appointment with the Red Sox.

  Years later, Cecconi would wish he could remember what they talked about that evening as the train rumbled across Ohio. Maybe they talked about Leon Hart, the western Pennsylvania behemoth who on Saturday afternoon would toss Cecconi around like a sack of rags during a 33–0 victory by the Irish.

  The only thing Cecconi really remembered from that night was the humility of the man, talking to a homeboy about football, about the college life he might have had under other circumstances.

  THEY WOULD meet many times over the years, at sports banquets, at weddings, at reunions, and increasingly at funerals. After playing football and basketball at Pitt, Cecconi would have two terms as offensive coordinator—“got fired by my alma mater, twice,” as he put it. A cultivated man who cooked and read, Cecconi also would have a long run as a high school principal.

  Whenever he and Musial would wind up under the same roof, the crowds would swarm around Musial, but Stanley would wave and say, “Geez, Bim, come over here and talk to me.” In old age, they were just a couple of guys from Donora, just as Musial had made it seem on that train ride so long ago.

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  BEST SERIES EVER

  THEY PLAYED the World Series in the daylight back then, in early October—unlike the damp and gloomy late-night afterthought it has become. In those simpler times, the Series ranked with heavyweight boxing matches, the Kentucky Derby, and the Rose Bowl. Pro football? Pro basketball? Hockey? Soccer? Auto racing? Filler items.

  And this was more than a World Series. It was a celebration of baseball’s being back. Just the caliber of the players, the familiarity of their names, made this a national reunion. Nothing against the participants in the 1945 World Series between the Tigers and Cubs, but more than half of those players didn’t even make it back to the major leagues in 1946.

  Europe and Asia were still smoldering and the world was just beginning to comprehend the horrors of the war, but the United States had some semblance of normalcy—no ruined cities, no lines of refugees. Now baseball offered up the prospect of not just a revived World Series but an epic one.

  Maybe because I had recently turned seven and was just discovering baseball and Musial and Williams, maybe because of where the world had been, maybe because of the events of the seventh game—but the World Series of 1946 still ranks in my mind as the best ever.

  I’ve rooted for my Brooklyn Dodgers in their generally traumatic ventures against the Yankees; I’ve seen Mantle win a game with a line drive into the upper deck, seen Gibson and Bench and Reggie and Jeter and Big Papi, seen Mookie Wilson’s grounder slither through Bill Buckner’s legs at first base. But 1946 still resonates.

  Part of the attraction came from the presence of the tempestuous Williams and the accommodating Musial, both products of their teams and their cities. Both had come back from the service and won a pennant. They were young, attractive, in their prime. Nobody needed much imagination to know this was great stuff.

  “The big individual duel was expected to be between Williams and me,” Musial said afterward.

  Musial led his league with a .365 average and he also drove in 103 runs and 16 homers, all personal bests. After trying to hit for power to please the admirals, he displayed a little more power in 1946—three homers more than 1943—although his stance did not seem all that different.

  Williams batted .342 with 123 RBIs and 38 homers. He wanted to be called the best hitter who ever lived, and he had a case.

  In those rudimentary days, before free agency and interleague play, American Leaguers and National Leaguers did not know each other very well. Williams had taken his first look at Musial on September 20 when he happened to be in Boston while the Cardinals played at Braves Field. Musial went five for five and drove in the winning run that day, and Williams was quoted as saying, “Musial has shown me more than anybody else with the stick.”

  The contrast between the two sluggers was only part of the appeal of this first full-cast World Series since 1941.

  Both teams were loaded. Boston had Rudy York, hard-living but savvy—“part Cherokee, part first baseman,” as somebody had labeled him; Dominic DiMaggio, the smooth center fielder; Bobby Doerr, the powerful second baseman; and Johnny Pesky, the peppery shortstop. The Cardinals had Slaughter, Moore, Kurowski, Marion, and Musial’s new roomie, Red. Both had deep pitching staffs and veteran benches—thirty players per team, to guarantee jobs after the war.

  The Red Sox came into the Series at a disadvantage: Williams was hurt. To keep in shape while the Cardinals and Dodgers were holding their playoff, the Red Sox had played three exhibitions against American League All-Stars, but Mickey Haefner, a left-hander with Washington, inadvertently plunked Williams on his right elbow.

  Williams did not discuss the elbow much, but there is no doubt it was stiff as he headed into the Series. I’m fine, the Kid roared at the people he called the “Knights of the Keyboard.” Williams got off the train in St. Louis and had to answer questions about a rumor floated by Dave Egan that the Sox were looking to trade him for either Joe DiMaggio or Hal Newhouser, the star pitcher of the Tigers, before the next season—probably not totally unfounded, as it turned out.

  This flap was a perfect example of the difference between the environments of Musial and Williams. When rumors surfaced in St. Louis, they were usually checked out through Musial’s pal Bob Broeg. Fans had a protective civic impulse and, generally, so did the press. Then again, with Musial, what was there to criticize? In Boston, Williams was friendly with clubhouse attendants and his fishing buddies but was distant toward the public. The accepting tone of St. Louis meant Musial could go into the World Series with a calm mind; the cranky questioning from Boston meant Williams would go into the Series with a few more darts planted in his sensitive hide.

  Another difference between the two clubs: Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey broke out cushy new uniforms for his players, while Breadon merely paid to have the Cardinals’ threadbare uniforms dry-cleaned.

  A note of defiance at the first game: Breadon, still smarting over being chastised for going to Mexico to address the Pasquels, entertained one of the brothers, Gerardo, in his personal box, much to the annoyance of Commissioner Chandler.

  Another subplot involved the Cardinals’ defense against Williams. During the season, the Indians’ player-manager, Lou Boudreau, had shifted his infielders, leaving only one on the left side of the diamond, daring Williams to give up his power and stroke the ball to the opposite field. The hardheaded Kid refused, on the theory that he was not going to let some genius mess with his wonderful swing.

  “Me, I’d have hit a ton against that kind of defense, but Ted chose to challenge it,” Musial said later.

  Dyer feinted in the press that he would not use the Boudreau shift, but he told his players that the dogged third baseman, Kurowski, would play the left side by himself. Marion and Kurowski suggested that the more mobile Mr. Shortstop patrol the left side, and Dyer agreed.

  The Cardinals had another strategy for the Kid. Freddy Schmidt, a spare Cardinal pitcher out in the bullpen, said that when Williams batted in the first game, some players in the Cardinal dugout began pointing imaginary rifles at the sky, going bang-bang-bang, as if shooting imaginary pigeons. This was a reference to Williams’s pastime of ridding Fenway Park of pigeons by blasting them with a shotgun in the morning hours—long before the fans arrived, a minor stipulation by the owner. (Once Williams had shot out some lights on the scoreboard, because he was in a bad mood. That was Teddy. Mostly he just shot pigeons.)

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�Ted! Ted! They’re up there!” the Cardinals shouted.

  “Ted didn’t like that,” Schmidt said. Williams cussed at them, told them what they could do.

  Joe Garagiola did not notice the commotion. He was crouching behind the batter’s box, too much in awe of Williams to hear any racket from the bench.

  “Twenty years old,” Garagiola recalled. “I was afraid I was going to ask for his autograph.”

  Williams watched the pitch right into Garagiola’s glove.

  “That was inside,” Williams boomed.

  “I said, ‘Yes, sir, yes, sir,’ ” Garagiola claimed.

  Williams then grounded out to Schoendienst, stationed perfectly halfway into right field—a portent of what was to come.

  The Sox won the first game, 3–2, on Rudy York’s homer in the tenth inning off Howard Pollet. But the Cardinals tied the Series the next day as the left-handed Brecheen allowed four singles in a 3–0 victory.

  Facing good left-handers, with a sore right elbow, Williams was over-compensating.

  “Once he missed a third-strike screwball with such a violent swing that his bat flew like a javelin into the visitors’ dugout,” Musial wrote.

  The series moved to Boston on October 9, and Williams broke his refusal to acknowledge the Boudreau shift by plopping the ball down the third-base line and beating it out. The headline in one Boston newspaper said, “Williams Bunts.” That annoyed the Kid, too.

  In the same game, Musial wandered off second base and was promptly picked off. He had no excuse, just lost his concentration. The Sox won, 4–0, as York belted a three-run homer and Boo Ferriss pitched a complete game.

  The Cardinals won the fourth game, 12–3, tying a Series record with 20 hits, four each by Slaughter, Garagiola, and Kurowski.

  But Boston went ahead again on October 11 as Joe Dobson beat the Cardinals, 6–3, and hit Slaughter on the elbow. Doc Weaver soaked the elbow in Epsom salts on the train ride home, but Dr. Hyland warned Slaughter against playing, for fear of doing permanent damage to the elbow.

  “If I’m breathing, I’m all right to play,” Slaughter said.

  Before the sixth game, Slaughter tested his elbow with a few tosses as the Sox watched attentively. “I thought I had him out of there,” Dobson said later, respectfully. Slaughter played, and the Cardinals drew even with a 4–1 victory behind Brecheen.

  After a day off, the teams took the field for an epic seventh game that is still being dissected, more than six decades later.

  Still hurt, still stubborn, Williams was trying to crank the ball over the short porch at Sportsman’s Park. He hit two long flies early, but they were chased down by Moore and Walker. Dickson retired eighteen of nineteen Red Sox from the second to the seventh inning.

  In the eighth inning, Dickson gave up two hits and was replaced by Brecheen, who was feeling sick as he sat on the bench, but told nobody.

  DiMaggio hit a double to drive in two runs to tie the game, but injured his hamstring racing to second and had to come out.

  Brecheen now had to face Williams, with two outs and DiMaggio’s pinch runner on second base. This was a chance for the Kid to make his statement, a chance to live up to his self-image as the greatest hitter in history. Williams tipped a Brecheen screwball, splitting a bare finger on the right hand of Garagiola, who had to come out of the game. Then Williams popped up to Schoendienst to end the rally, with the game still tied.

  In the bottom of the eighth, the Boston manager, Joe Cronin, sent in thirty-six-year-old Bob Klinger, who had not pitched since September 19. Years later, some of the Sox would reveal they had been lobbying Cronin not to use Klinger, but it was too late. He was in the game.

  Slaughter, playing with an injury, just like Williams, then hit a single to center. The next two batters made outs without advancing Slaughter from first.

  That brought up Harry Walker, who had fought his way through the killing fields of Germany and organized rudimentary baseball games on Hitler’s tainted marching grounds in Nuremberg. Back in civilian life, Walker—counseled by his rival and brother, Dixie—had ignored orders from Dyer to pull the ball for more power. Be true to your stroke, the Dodger had told his Cardinal brother.

  Klinger, a righty with a sinkerball, got a 2–1 count on Walker, who followed his brother’s advice and stroked a hit over the shortstop into left-center field.

  Slaughter, running on the pitch, raced around second as DiMaggio’s replacement, Leon Culberson, chased the ball from straightaway center field. (Only after Culberson’s death in 1989 did the gentlemanly DiMaggio admit he had been agonizing on the bench, watching his substitute far out of position for Walker. DiMaggio had feared what would happen next.)

  Slaughter’s dash had a history to it: in the first game of the Series, Slaughter had been held up by coach Mike Gonzalez and had vowed he would not be held up again. Thus, when Culberson bobbled the ball momentarily and then threw toward Pesky, the cutoff man, Slaughter was prepared.

  “That gave me the first inkling of scoring,” Slaughter said years later. “I knew John would not be expecting it and I knew I had to slow up just enough to decoy him into relaxing as I headed for third.”

  “My God, I thought he was crazy,” Gonzalez said. “Who knows—maybe he is. But who cares?”

  “Gonzalez couldn’t have stopped Enos with a gun,” Garagiola said. And neither could Pesky.

  As Pesky received the ball, Slaughter barreled around third base and headed home. First reports said Pesky double-pumped as he turned toward home, but these were naked-eye impressions without modern television replays. Films showed minimal hesitation on Pesky’s part.

  Country Slaughter ran—and ran—and slid home as catcher Roy Partee dove ten feet up the line chasing Pesky’s hurried throw. The run was the doing of Slaughter and Walker, but every World Series game has to have a goat as well as a hero, so Pesky was elected. Forever.

  “I’ve looked at those films a thousand times,” Pesky said later. “They said I took a snooze, but I can’t see where I hesitated. Slaughter was at second when the ball was hit. He was twenty feet from home plate when I turned. I can’t blame anybody. Those things have happened to better ballplayers than me. I guess you have to live with it.”

  The official scorer took some of the romance out of Slaughter’s dash by calling Walker’s hit a double. The play would look better in posterity if the box score said Slaughter scored on a single, which essentially he did, with Walker taking second on the throw.

  Either way, Slaughter scored—“the run heard ’round the world,” Musial called it, pre-dating the immortal phrase for Bobby Thomson’s pennant-winning homer in 1951.

  In the ninth inning, the bloodless infield Leo Durocher had belittled held off the Red Sox. The wobbly Brecheen gave up two hits, but Kurowski and Marion collaborated on a force at second. Musial caught a foul pop near the dugout for the second out. Then Schoendienst, the man with the bad eye from the CCC accident in his teens, controlled a tricky grounder that threatened to roll up his forearm, and backhanded the ball to Mr. Shortstop for the final out.

  The great game in the great Series in the great season was over. Not many people in St. Louis were thinking about the war as horns honked and bells chimed and men threw fedoras in the air.

  In the rollicking clubhouse, Garagiola, the class clown, his split finger in bandages, was chirping: “I’m out for the season! I’m out for the season!” In the middle of the joy, Musial was surrounded by equals, by normalcy, just one of the gang.

  LESS THAN two hours later, ten Nazi leaders were hanged, after trials for war crimes, in Nuremberg, where Harry Walker had been. The Nazis walked up thirteen steps to dual scaffolds “in an old gymnasium, used the previous weekend by American security guards for a basketball game,” as journalist John McGuire wrote fifty years later. “The bodies were removed at 10:34 p.m., St. Louis time, as wild celebrations raged throughout the city over the world championship.”

  WHEN THE Sox arrived in Union Station, Williams stumb
led to the private car and slumped into a seat, but forgot to pull the blinds. Hundreds of fans were standing on the platform, separated by glass, a few inches away, gaping at one of the great hitters in baseball as he sobbed.

  Williams had no way of knowing he would never get back to the Series. All he knew was that he’d gotten five singles in twenty-five at-bats and driven in one run. The injured elbow? He was fine, dammit.

  The self-styled Colonel Egan would devise a list of Williams’s alleged failures in “the ten biggest games of his career.” Everything the Kid did was larger than life.

  Stanley had six hits in twenty-seven at-bats in the Series, but they included four doubles, a triple, and four runs batted in—and that one embarrassing pickoff in the third game. That gave him a highly ordinary batting average of .256 with one home run in twenty-three World Series games. The Cardinals had won three of four World Series in Musial’s first four full seasons. As far as he could see, he would have more chances to do better.

  Yet nobody in his adopted city, nobody in the great breadth of Cardinals radio, ever devised a list of Stanley’s failures. Nobody would ever write or shout that he was not a clutch hitter or a team man.

  “I hadn’t contributed much, batting just .222, but in my head-to-head test against Williams, I had the edge,” he would say about that series.

  Because both parks were unusually small, the gate receipts were correspondingly low. Williams, known for his generosity to friends, would sign over his losing share of $2,141 to Johnny Orlando, the clubhouse attendant.

  Full shares for the winning Cardinals would be $3,742, enough for a down payment on a postwar house for the Musials—and just low enough to draw a rare flash of sarcasm from Stanley, the good citizen.

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