Yogi Berra, Musial’s St. Louis pal, had caught the entire game and was still squatting behind home plate. In one of his books, Berra and his writer put it this way: “Stash is the oldest player in the game and tells me he’s getting weary. I tell him my feet are tired, too. And ain’t it a shame nobody can see the ball through the shadows? Stash tells me to relax, says we’re all going home soon. And he smashed the first pitch for a home run.”
In a conversation in 2009, Berra recalled that All-Star Game: “It was a long game, you know. We were just talking, saying, I wish this game would get over with.”
“It’s been said that Stanley told you he was going to get it over with,” I told Berra.
“Nah, he didn’t,” Berra insisted.
Then there is Frank Sullivan of the Red Sox, who delivered the pitch. Known for his wit as a player, Sullivan claimed half a century later that Musial was laughing as he got into the batter’s box and that Yogi said, “For crying out loud, Stan, do something. This game has gone on far too long.”
Musial promptly hit the ball into the stands (Bud Selig still waxes on about the parabola of the game-ending drive) and toured the bases, clearly quite happy with himself.
Sullivan ended his story this way: “Later, Berra came over to my locker and said, ‘I should have told you he was a high fastball hitter.’ ”
Yogi was too much of a competitor to intentionally allow Sullivan to put the wrong pitch in the wrong place for the wrong slugger—even if it was his St. Louis pal. But that was the result: Stanley the homebody sent everybody home.
31
STANLEY GIVES AN INTERVIEW
ZEV YAROSLAVSKY is not sure of the year. It was either 1958 or 1959, the first or second season the Dodgers were ensconced in Los Angeles.
Yaroslavsky would later become a supervisor of Los Angeles County, a nationally prominent politician, but back in the late fifties he had loftier goals: he wanted to be the next Vin Scully.
Scully was conducting a primer course in major-league baseball for denizens of southern California, who would bring transistor radios to the Coliseum to listen to his mellifluous yet still New York accent.
Yaroslavsky decided the best way to become the next Vin Scully was to secure an interview with the reigning grand old deity of the National League, Stan Musial.
The boy of ten or eleven did not work for a radio station. He did not even own a tape recorder. However, he did have nerve.
“I found out that the Cardinals were staying at the old Statler downtown,” Yaroslavsky said. “I must have found that in a baseball media guide or something. I called the hotel and asked for Mr. Musial’s room and they connected me. That wouldn’t happen today, of course.
“He picked up the phone and I put on my deepest pre-puberty voice,” Yaroslavsky recalled. “I said my name was Bob Price and I worked for KLAC and asked if I could have a brief interview.”
Musial agreed, so Bob Price commenced.
“How’s the team?”
“The Cardinals look pretty good.”
“In what ways?”
“Good hitting, good fielding, good defense, good pitching.”
“Let’s talk about the hitting.”
“We have this kid Curt Flood and he looks good, and Kenny Boyer is a good power hitter.”
“What about the defense?”
“That Julian Javier is a terrific fielder.”
“What about pitching?”
“Gibson and Broglio are excellent pitchers. We think we have a good staff that can win a lot of games.”
Four decades later, Yaroslavsky remembered running out of questions before Stan Musial ran out of answers. Bob Price thanked Musial for his time.
Musial’s last words were, “Thank you, son.”
“AT THAT moment, I was very embarrassed,” Yaroslavsky remembered. “My con didn’t work. He could have hung up or lectured me or chewed me out, but he didn’t. In his own inimitable way, he let me know that he knew, but he gave me the interview anyway.
“You know,” Yaroslavsky continued, “I’ve been around a lot of people since then. I’ve seen people acting like jerks. As I got into politics, I thought about that moment. If Stan Musial could take the time for somebody, so could I. If somebody’s power got cut off on a weekend, or somebody had a landslide in their backyard at night, or somebody died on a Sunday and needed a death certificate, you could never be too busy to listen to them.”
Yaroslavsky never met Musial, but about a decade ago a friend arranged for Musial to autograph a ball that now sits in Yaroslavsky’s living room. The inscription says: “To Zev, a great fan. Stan Musial.” It does not call him “son.”
The 1938 Donora baseball team included Stan Musial (fourth from left, top row) and Buddy Griffey (second from left, seated). To Griffey’s right is Dr. Michael (Ki) Duda, who organized the team and was a mentor to Musial. Donora Historical Society
Six of Donora’s most successful athletes depicted in a mural in the old high school: (Clockwise, from upper left) Ken Griffey Sr., Stan Musial, Arnold Galiffa, Ulice Payne Jr., The Honorable Reggie B. Walton, and Dan Towler. George Vecsey
The young Musial just wanted to make contact so he could last a few weeks or months in the majors. The National Baseball Hall of Fame
A very proud Lukasz Musial visited his son in New York during the 1942 World Series. Here they discuss a minor injury that did not keep Stan out of the lineup. AP
Musial (right) and an unidentified sailor enjoy a cup of coffee in Pearl Harbor, where Musial played baseball in 1945. The National Baseball Hall of Fame
Whitey Kurowski, Enos Slaughter, Marty Marion, and Musial display their uniform numbers during the 1946 World Series, the last trip to the Series for the Cardinals for eighteen years. Getty Images
The Donora Zinc Works sent smoke into the Monongahela River valley, contributing to the murderous 1948 smog. Donora Historical Society
Stan the Man took his unique stance to a record 24 All-Star Games, hitting six home runs. Here he is, about to strike out as a pinch-hitter in the 1961 game with Elston Howard of the Yankees catching and Larry Napp umpiring.
Chuck Schmidt, who coached Musial in Donora, and befriended him during his brief stay in Rochester, N.Y., in 1941, visited him at the Dodgers’ training camp in Vero Beach, Florida, in 1954. Jim Kreuz
When the Cardinals opened a motel for all the families in spring training of 1962, Lil was front and center (white frilly blouse). She and Leila Keane, the wife of Manager Johnny Keane (standing center, dark bathing suit) set a welcome tone for the black players and their families. Courtesy of Mildred White
Two Stanleys: When the Cardinals returned to the Polo Grounds in 1962 to play the Mets, Musial agreed to pose with an old friend, Stan Isaacs of Newsday, whose column was fittingly named “Out of Left Field.” Courtesy of Stan Isaacs (photo by Luis Requeña)
“My Buddy.” With President Kennedy in the White House, July 1962. Courtesy of John H. Zentay
Ted Williams always liked to claim he was the favorite player of Musial’s mother. Dick Collins
Musial was named an advisor on physical fitness by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Courtesy of Gerry Ashley
Musial and (clockwise) Waite Hoyt, Roy Campanella, and Stan Coveleski at their induction into the Hall of Fame in 1969. Dick Collins
Stan introduced his mother at the 1969 induction while Lil and daughters enjoyed the moment. Dick Collins
Musial’s plaque at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. National Baseball Hall of Fame
Stan Musial & Biggie’s was a landmark in St. Louis for decades. The food was good, too, according to Tim McCarver. Courtesy of Mickey McTague
Danny Kaye was a big fan of Musial and Willie Mays. Dick Collins
Old timers came out for a 1970 exhibition that raised funds in the name of Martin Luther King Jr. Left to right: Joe DiMaggio, Musial, John McNamara, Billy Martin, Larry Doby. Dick Collins
The swing that launched 3,630 hits, demonstrated once
again at Cooperstown, sometime in the early 1980s. Dick Collins
Lil and Stan were always the life of the party at Cooperstown. This time they were joined by son, Dick, and his wife, Sharon. Dick Collins
The three amigos. Musial, Ed Piszek, and James Michener meeting in Miami, en route to Warsaw, 1988. Larry Christenson
The Stance visited the Collosseum, using James Michener’s cane, while Larry Christenson observed. Larry Christenson
Musial and entourage with Pope John Paul II. On that same visit they had dinner with the Pope in his apartment. Larry Christenson
Musial was inducted into the Brooklyn Dodger Hall of Fame in June 1990, and was greeted by former Dodgers … and writers and fans. Marty Adler
Sharing the same birth date (November 21) and the same hometown (Donora, PA), Ken Griffey Jr., dropped everything to have his photo taken with Musial at Cooperstown. Musial was a high-school teammate of Junior’s grandfather, Buddy Griffey. Dick Collins
Growing up in Oklahoma, Mickey Mantle admired Musial. Here, Willie Mays seems dubious about Mantle’s story. This photo was taken early in 1995, just months before Mantle’s death. Dick Collins
Although not thrilled with the posture of the Carl Mose statue, Musial was nevertheless proud to have it remain a meeting point at the new ballpark in St. Louis. William O. DeWitt III stands beside him at the second unveiling. AP
Musial liked the energy of the smaller 1998 statue by Harry Weber and loved posing alongside it. AP. Photographer: Tom Gannan
Opening Day, 2009. The always-reverential Albert Pujols adjusted Musial’s jacket. “It was cold,” Pujols said. “I was afraid he would be cold out there.” Chris Lee, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The Cardinals imitated a popular literacy project, Flat Stanley, in 2010, mounting a Flat Stan campaign for the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Courtesy of Ron Watermon, Director of Public Relations & Civic Affairs, St. Louis Cardinals, LLC
In February 2011, Musial was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. Courtesy of Doug Mills/The New York Times
32
TEMPER, TEMPER
No matter who you talk to on this project, you’re not going to find one person that’s going to say one bad word about Stan Musial.
It’s going to be very difficult. You’re going to want to have somebody tell you they saw Stan kick an old grandma in the knee one time when she asked for an autograph, but you’re not going to hear that. He’s been gracious his entire life and he’s going to be that way the rest of his life, I am sure.
—Dal Maxvill, teammate, colleague, friend
FOUND ONE.
After collecting thousands of examples of Musial’s kindness and good humor, it was downright refreshing to hear of an instance when Stanley actually got angry—at a kid! Otherwise, we should be submitting his name for sainthood. Much better to think of him as a nearly but not quite perfect human being.
The eyewitness report of Stanley’s Bad Moment came totally unsolicited from Steve Kaufman, a writer for trade magazines, who once was an eleven-year-old urchin on the North Side of Chicago. He heard I was doing a book on Musial and, with no malice and a wry detachment over the decades, recalled a moment in the summer of 1954 when Musial grumped at him.
On that fateful day, Kaufman recalled, he took the Kedzie bus and transferred to the Addison bus to Wrigley Field, paying 75¢ for a general-admission ticket.
“The Cubs were awful, but who cared?” Kaufman said years later. “In the opposite dugout were Jackie Robinson and Duke Snider, or Willie Mays, or Richie Ashburn and Robin Roberts, or Eddie Mathews and Henry Aaron and Warren Spahn, or Ted Kluszewski … or Musial.”
Visiting players would leave Wrigley through a side gate, where youths would congregate, asking the ballplayers for their autograph. Kaufman spotted Musial walking with Vic Raschi, the former Yankee who had moved over to the Cardinals.
Kaufman did what kids have always done outside ballparks: he stood in Musial’s path and plaintively asked, “Would you sign this, Stan?”
In those days there was no market for autographs. Children were not greedy little speculators. Cajoling a scribbled signature was a way to be in the proximity of a ballplayer for a second or two.
For whatever reason, this was not one of Musial’s better days.
“Without breaking his stride, he looked down at us and hissed, through gritted teeth, I’ll never forget: ‘Get outta my way or I’ll kick you in the shins.’ ”
In the shins? Stanley threatened to kick a kid in the shins?
“Not every player signed that afternoon,” Kaufman said. “Most of those who didn’t simply ignored us, like you try to do with beggars on Calcutta streets. But none was so openly hostile as the great Musial,” Kaufman said.
“Over the years, as I’d read about his friendly nature, his grand generosity, and especially his endless patience with fans, I thought about that afternoon in Chicago. I wondered if he’d just had a bad afternoon. I’m guessing he didn’t. Musial rarely had bad afternoons against the Cubs.”
This outburst, which I am assuming happened just that way, is hard to understand. That summer happened to be one of the hottest ever in the Midwest. The Cardinals were not in contention. Musial was on his way to his normal .330. Who knows? All that is left for one aging fan is the memory of Stan Musial ducking down a North Side street, threatening to kick a kid in the shins.
MUSIAL DID have a temper. People said it happened fast, a flare of anger.
Jack Buck attested to the night he and Red and Musial visited Toots Shor’s oasis in New York and a group of five men from Omaha asked Musial to autograph a menu. When Musial handed it back, one of the men ostentatiously ripped it in half.
“Why would anybody do a thing like that?” Buck asked years later. “Stan flipped and started after the guy, but Toots’s bartenders got there first. They jumped over the bar and had four of those people out on the street in a blink. They kept one guy inside to pay the bill and then hustled him to the sidewalk. It was a good thing Stan never got to them.”
So Stanley could get riled up at a cluster of jerks who were probably, in Casey Stengel’s phrase, whiskey-slick. Buck added, “By the way, I asked Musial once what he would have done if he had not been a baseball player, and he said he thought he would have been a boxer.”
With those back muscles and reflexes, Musial could have been a contender, at the very least. But there is no record of him ever hitting anybody.
Musial also displayed righteous anger in New York in the mid-fifties on a cab ride up to the Polo Grounds. One of his teammates noticed a Jewish name on the cabbie’s placard and starting speaking in a crude version of a Jewish accent. Musial told the teammate to cease and desist, making for a rather uncomfortable ride. When they got to the ballpark, the teammate tried to pay for the ride, as if to make amends, but Musial insisted on paying, and then he warned the teammate to never get in a cab with him. Ever. But there were no fisticuffs, and certainly no shin kicking.
That little episode outside Wrigley goes down in history as one of nature’s mysteries, but affirmative in its own way. Stanley was human. Thank goodness for that.
33
AND SOME BAD TIMES
AFTER YEARS of unstable ownership, St. Louis finally got an owner with deep pockets and civic stature. Gussie Busch, from the old brewery family, bought the Cardinals for $7.8 million on February 20, 1953.
“My ambition,” Busch said, “is, whether hell or high water, to get a championship baseball team for St. Louis before I die.”
Fortunately, Busch had good genes for longevity, if not for patience. His arrival was also a sign that the Cardinals had outlasted their longtime landlords, the Browns. Bill Veeck had tried to reach the large but passive segment of Browns fans by hiring icons like Rogers Hornsby and Marty Marion as managers and indulging in gimmicks like having a midget pinch-hit. But Veeck was forced out after 1952 and the Browns moved to Baltimore in 1954. Meanwhile, the Cardinals and their fan
s could count on the deep pockets, if short fuse, of August Anheuser Busch Jr.
Known as Gussie to the public and Gus to friends, Busch was used to getting his own way; the French expression droit de seigneur (the right of the lord) comes to mind. He would wed four times, produce ten children, and generally demand his way in beer, baseball, and life itself. He had a lot of toys, now including a baseball team.
Joe Garagiola recalled Busch and George Vierheller, the longtime director of the St. Louis Zoo, playing pepper, with Stanley tapping the ball “so softly that if it had been an egg he wouldn’t have cracked the shell,” Garagiola said, and Schoendienst “playing like he was the bodyguard.”
Normally, the players bet sodas when they frolicked at pepper. Tommy Glaviano, a Cardinal infielder, watched the quartet and shouted, “Hey, Stan, what are you playing for, a keg of beer or a tiger?”
Playing pepper was the least of Busch’s activities. As a young adult, to cheer up his ailing father, Busch once rode his horse right up the central stairway of the family mansion, straight into the bedroom where his paterfamilias was confined.
And on the day Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the thirty-four-year-old scion drove an old-fashioned beer wagon straight down Pennsylvania Avenue to deliver a keg or two to the White House. President Roosevelt’s support of repeal earned the permanent loyalty of Busch, who said, “I’ll be damned if I’ll bite the hand that fed me.”
He had so much fun making his beer run in the nation’s capital that he began hitching the ornate beer wagons to eight-horse teams of powerful Clydesdales, which were quartered in handsome stables at the family estate, Grant’s Farm.
Stan Musial Page 23