Stan Musial

by George Vecsey

  “Now I know how Lindbergh felt,” Musial told Broeg.

  When the train finally reached Union Station in St. Louis around eleven that night, hundreds of people were waiting, including Gerry Musial, now a teenager.

  “He told the fans, ‘All you kids get a day off from school,’ ” Gerry recalled. “And there were a lot of kids there.”

  Did the Musial children follow their father’s advice and become truants?

  “I think Mom took us in late,” Gerry said.

  MUSIAL HIT .337 in 1958, with a slight drop-off in power, and Hutch was dismissed in mid-September as the Cardinals tied for fifth. Nearly thirty-eight years old, physically and mentally worn out, Musial could have used a restful off-season at home with Lil, who was pregnant with their fourth child, but the Cardinals were committed to a trip to Asia, and Musial’s presence was very much part of the deal. He was allowed to miss three early stops but reported in Seoul, South Korea, before the team went to Japan.

  “At first, I wasn’t too keen about making the trip,” Musial recalled. “I knew I’d be worn out. But I’m mighty glad that I went. That trip thirty years ago was worth it. I have lasting impressions. My wife does, too.”

  The trip was important because of baseball’s status as the national sport of Japan. General Douglas MacArthur had encouraged the sport to be resumed quickly after World War II, and Lefty O’Doul, the great San Francisco slugger, had returned with financial and moral support. The knowledgeable and passionate fans were waiting for the Cardinals and their star player.

  “They gave us a parade like we won the World Series,” recalled Joe Cunningham, a younger teammate, who added: “Stan was tired. We all were tired.”

  Just like the American navy brass in 1945, the Japanese fans had high expectations of Musial’s power.

  “I tried awfully hard to please the Japanese fans. But I remember hitting only two home runs,” Musial said. “Home runs were what the Japanese expected of me. I was tired, worn out after the regular season. I’m sorry they couldn’t have seen me earlier.”

  The hosts would give a present to every player who gave an interview for radio or television, along with a gift to his wife or girlfriend. In his autobiography, Musial described “one unending whirl of parades, ball games, receptions, conducted tours, cocktail parties, dinners and entertainment. From the prime minister to the countless Japanese school kids we saw playing ball every day, the Japanese were gracious hosts, kind and courteous.”

  He impressed the Japanese by learning how to sign his autograph in Japanese characters. He also came up with a story he would tell for decades: “At one of the countless interviews I had with the radio and TV people, I mentioned that I was in the restaurant business. One writer asked, ‘Ah, so, Musial-san. Are you then a waiter?’ ”

  Without knowing it, Musial had a role in the career of one of Japan’s greatest players—Sadaharu Oh, then seventeen, the son of a Chinese noodle-shop operator and a Japanese mother. In a country that loves its national high school tournament, the Koshien, Oh was already Japan’s best known prospect.

  With Musial on everybody’s mind, Oh’s batting coach, Tetsuharu Kawakami, strongly suggested Oh adapt Musial’s coiled stance.

  “Hitting is with your hip, not with your hand,” said Kawakami, who had won five batting titles in Japan. “You can see the ball with your hip.” But the youngster was uncomfortable twisting his body that way and, with the obstinacy of a seventeen-year-old, Oh declined.

  Several years later, on the brink of failure, partially through his excesses and hardheadedness, Oh would submit to his guru and accept an even more idiosyncratic stance, with his front leg, the right one, lifted in the middle of his swing.

  The flamingo stance, as the Japanese would call it, had its roots in the twisted Musial position. That barnstorming trip by the Cardinals would help produce Oh’s 868 homers, the greatest total by any hitter in baseball history.

  Years later, Musial and Oh would meet, shake hands, and bow to each other, left-handed sluggers from opposite shores, comrades in unorthodoxy.

  PLAYING AGAINST all-star teams, the Cardinals won 14 games and lost 2. The players also had a chance to get acquainted with their new manager, Solomon Joseph Hemus, known as “Solly” or “the Mouse,” one of those pepper-pot middle-infielder types out of the Durocher mold.

  Hemus had come up with the Cardinals in 1949 and immediately showed an opportunistic side, slipping his shoes in Musial’s locker so they would get shined on Musial’s tab.

  “Butch Yatkeman did a real good job,” Hemus said in 2010, by which time he had long left baseball and become rich in the oil bidness. “He always took care of Stan, and I was just a rookie. I’d just slide ’em in there. One day he almost caught me. I don’t think Stan cared.”

  His parents did not name him Solomon for nothing. Upon being traded to the Phillies in 1956, Hemus wrote a letter to Busch saying how much he loved the Cardinals and would like to come back someday.

  “I thought maybe I could go back as a coach, maybe manage in the minor leagues, something,” Hemus said. “I put it in the back of my mind; I don’t know if I was really striving. When I had the job offered to me, naturally I took it.”

  Naturally. Busch never forgot the letter and told Devine that Hemus was going to be the next manager, starting with the Asian trip. Watching a tired old man trudge through a November barnstorming tour, Hemus formed his impression that Stanley had very little left.

  Jeanne was born early in 1959, and Musial received permission to report late to spring training, which did not help him. He did not hit early in the season and looked awkward in left field, so Hemus moved him to first base, forcing Bill White to play the outfield. Some days Hemus did not play Musial at all. His explanation was that he was resting him, not benching him.

  In August, the Sporting News ran a copyrighted story that Musial might be traded for Yogi Berra, who could have been a Cardinal all along if Branch Rickey had had the presence of mind to sign him. The paper also reported a “coolness” between Hemus and Musial.

  This was the first time Musial had confronted the serious prospect of failure and rejection since the Trader Lane episode, yet this most stable athlete managed to not upset his entire household. Gerry Ashley could not remember any dark cloud hanging over her father as she entered her teens. Half a century later, she asked her mother about the Hemus years.

  “My mom said, ‘Your father was pretty inconsolable,’ ” Gerry reported.

  Lil told her daughter, “I tried to reason with him, saying, ‘You are getting older.’ But looking back, I shouldn’t have told him that.”

  It was probably not a good thing to tell a superstar who was dealing with rumors and sitting on the bench at the same time. Everybody agreed the Berra rumor was foolish, and Busch once again affirmed that Musial would never be traded. Busch also called him out to Grant’s Farm to ask whether Hemus should be fired.

  “I said, ‘I think Solly deserves a little more chance of being the Cardinal manager,’ ” Musial said in the late nineties. “As I look back, I probably could have ended Solly’s career at that time. He was thinking of firing him, but I gave Solly a vote of confidence. I thought maybe Solly’d let me play the next year. But I didn’t play much. So he let him manage the next year, and about halfway into the next season they got rid of him.”

  The front office did agree that Musial would not play much the rest of the season, to give younger players a chance. Asked about reports of coolness between himself and Musial, Hemus tried to make a joke out of it: “I’d better not go to his restaurant anymore. I’ll probably get nothing but tough steaks.”

  He was still joking about it in 2010. “His kids hated me, of course. They wouldn’t talk to me,” Hemus said.

  “Please tell him that was not the case, at least for me,” Gerry Ashley said, recalling how the Musial and Hemus women got along during that time. Marguerite Hemus and her daughter, Peggy, drove to spring training in a caravan with Lil and G
erry—a major responsibility, since Lil had not started driving until she was thirty and was still not comfortable with high speeds and long distances. Gerry remembered the drive as fun, with no sense of rancor.

  “Dad never brought any problems home,” Gerry said.

  Hemus could joke about it years later, but he was under intense pressure to do the right thing by Stanley. Bob Broeg said he urged Hemus to give Musial more of a chance, reminding the manager how Musial had tipped him to use a lighter bat earlier in his career.

  It was true, Hemus admitted in 2010. He had hit 16 homers in five years in the minor leagues, but in 1952 and 1953 he hit 15 and 14 home runs, respectively.

  “He gave me a lot of good tips on hitting,” Hemus admitted. “Getting out in front on the ball. He’s a great baseball man. Unless you ask him, he wouldn’t bother. A lot of ballplayers don’t want a lot of advice. They want to go down the road themselves. I wasn’t like that. I was looking for anything I could get.”

  Broeg told Hemus he owed Musial more patience, but Hemus used him in only 115 games and Musial wound up hitting .255 in 1959, by far the worse average of his career. Friends suggested it might be time to retire, but he shrugged them off.

  He did acknowledge the miserable year by accepting the maximum pay cut allowable under union rules, twenty percent, from $100,000 to $80,000. In his Broeg-written autobiography, Musial adopts the passive voice—“I took a pretty good cut without complaint”—but in the Sporting News article, his quotes suggest he initiated the cut: “The Cardinals have been generous to me the past few years, so I thought I’d be kind to them.” Needless to say, the Cardinals obliged his sporting gesture.

  In the same winter, he worked out under the noted physical educator, Walter Eberhardt of St. Louis University, along with other players, and when Musial reported to spring training in 1960 he looked five years younger.

  He still did not hit. This time Hemus did not deny that Musial was being benched rather than merely rested. That fall, while campaigning for John F. Kennedy, Musial told his new friend James A. Michener that the Cardinals had tested his eyesight.

  “Stan Musial, who functioned longer than most, told me a bittersweet story,” Michener wrote. “ ‘One of the saddest days of my life was when I found out about my eyes. Before age forty I hadn’t felt the slightest loss in seeing. Then my eyes started to go bad. The ball looked so much smaller than it used to. First base seemed to be actually farther away. So the Cards sent me to the top eye doctors, and they examined me for a while with the latest machines, and at the end they gave me the bad news. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your eyes.” I was just getting older, like everybody else.’ ”

  Hemus made the benching worse by misleading Musial. On May 14, he told Musial he would play in the second game, but when he made out the lineup card, Musial was not on it. Musial questioned Hemus about it in the clubhouse, maybe the first time he had ever been heard to openly challenge a manager.

  Things got worse. On May 16, Hemus used Musial as a pawn, sending him up to pinch-hit with first base open, an obvious invitation to the opposing manager to walk Musial on purpose. By that strategy, Hemus bestowed the responsibility on Carl Sawatski, a backup catcher who would hit .229 that season. Sawatski promptly made Hemus look like a genius by stroking a game-winning sacrifice fly—no surprise to Solomon.

  Hemus did make two good moves that season, sending Curt Flood to center field and restoring Bill White to first base, the natural positions for both. However, for much of the season left field was patrolled by a cast of thousands. As the fans fretted, Busch summoned Musial, Hemus, Bing Devine, and the brewery official Richard A. Meyer to Busch’s estate, and the Cardinals publicly confirmed that Musial was being benched indefinitely.

  While Musial was observing the open tryout in left field, he came as close to leaving the Cardinals as he ever would. When the Pirates were in St. Louis in June, Les Biederman of the Pittsburgh Press quoted a “friend” of Musial’s as saying: “You don’t take a player who has starred for nineteen years and stick him in the corner of the dugout and let him die.”

  The “friend” continued: “You know, I believe there’s only one team Stan would play for aside from the Cardinals. I mean, the Pirates. I sort of think he’s going to say his farewell going down the stretch with a pennant contender from his old home town.”

  Biederman, as beat reporters do, promptly asked Danny Murtaugh, the manager of the Pirates, about the possibility of acquiring Musial, and Murtaugh was quoted as saying, “You know, I do believe we might be able to find a place for a fellow like Stan Musial.” Murtaugh was also quoted as saying, “But heck, Stan never would leave the Cardinals.”

  Many years later, Broeg confirmed he was indeed the friend, but said Joe L. Brown, the general manager of the Pirates, had told him, “As much as we’d like to have Musial, we won’t make an offer for him. I just can’t do it to Bing Devine, a fine man. Sure, if Musial were released, we would grab him in a minute.” Busch was not about to give Musial away, and the Pirates could not afford him. But for a few days, the option was there.

  In late June, Bob Nieman, who had played very well in Musial’s absence, was injured, and Musial was back in the lineup, quietly seething, going on a 20-for-41 tear. Totally by statistical accident, he happened to murder the Pirates the rest of the year, as they won the pennant.

  “By then, when I’d go home to Donora to visit my mother, even friends and neighbors were giving me a hard look. They were happy I was hitting, but not when I beat their Bucs.”

  In 1964, Musial and Broeg would come out with Musial’s autobiography, which mildly criticized Hemus for benching him. Hemus, by then the third-base coach in Cleveland, put out a statement:

  I benched Musial because he was in a batting slump in 1960 after the Cardinals had finished seventh in 1959. I’d bench my own brother under similar circumstances.

  The newspapers in St. Louis published editorials when I benched Musial but nobody said anything when we climbed up to third place. Bob Nieman, who replaced Musial, saved my job for me. He carried the whole team on his back until he injured his leg. If Nieman hadn’t been hurt, Musial would have stayed out much longer than the month and a half he was benched.

  Musial and I are friends. He’s good for the team on and off the field. He’s the easiest player I ever managed. But there’s no room for sentiment in baseball.

  Musial got through 1960 the same way he had outlasted Trader Lane. He hit .275 in 116 games with slightly more power, and the Pirates wound up winning the World Series without him.

  It probably worked out for everybody. Moving to his home region might have smacked of a mercy move, and Stanley had a good thing going in St. Louis. His basic instinct was, Do not disturb.

  34

  ON THE HUSTINGS

  STANLEY RAN with a different crowd in the fall of 1960. Instead of traveling with Red and the other Cardinals, he was part of a merry band that romped around the middle of the country, campaigning for John F. Kennedy for president.

  By now, Musial had been out and about, had met a lot of celebrities, and was not in awe of much. In his own Stanley way he fit right in with temporary teammates like Byron (Whizzer) White, a former professional football player and later a Supreme Court justice; James A. Michener, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author; Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., the writer; Ethel Kennedy and Joan Kennedy; and Hollywood stars Jeff Chandler and Angie Dickinson.

  “Oh, my God, he was always funny,” Dickinson said about Musial in 2010. “Of course, he wasn’t funny when we were giving speeches but funny when we hung out together. We all ate dinner together after our rallies and he was the life of the party. Such a dear guy.”

  They all bonded quickly, like an all-star team thrown together for a short time, eager to hear one another’s shop talk. They were united in support of the young senator from Massachusetts, who was forty-two at the time, three and a half years older than Musial.

  Musial often told how he had bee
n recruited after meeting Kennedy on a street corner in Milwaukee in September 1959. The senator sought out the ballplayer while he was touring Wisconsin, preparing for his presidential run, and was told the Cardinals were outside their hotel, waiting for the team bus.

  “They tell me you’re too old to play ball and I’m too young to be president, but maybe we’ll fool them,” Kennedy said.

  Musial, who had favored Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican moderate, in the 1952 and 1956 elections, was already kindly disposed toward the energetic young senator, through Musial’s partnership with Biggie, who was active in Democratic politics.

  The Kennedy “vigah”—as people pronounced it in those days, imitating the family Boston accent—also won Musial over. The Kennedys were Roman Catholic as well, which undoubtedly touched a nerve in Musial.

  The young senator was having a hard time in many midwestern and western states, facing questions about whether he would be loyal to his religion, to a foreign pope, rather than to the United States. The Kennedy people wanted to flood some Republican states with familiar names and faces, and apparently White suggested Musial, who had never been politically active. Musial agreed to go along for the last week of the campaign in Michigan, Illinois, Nebraska, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Indiana, and Kentucky.

  The group was flown from rally to rally in the private plane of Jerold Hoffberger, the president of the National Brewing Company and principal owner of the Baltimore Orioles, who was between Musial and Kennedy in age. It was summer camp.

  “No time was designated for meals or washing up. There were speeches, short plane hops, more speeches, long plane hops, more speeches, and a distant hotel in which to flop,” wrote Michener, who had been active in Democratic politics in the Philadelphia area.