Stan Musial

by George Vecsey

  In that terrible week, Musial seemed to understand his role: his buddy had been gunned down, and the world needed to see Stanley. And if that was not how he was thinking, it was how he came off.

  The restaurant became even more important to Musial upon his retirement. Greeting strangers was part of his persona. Besides, the family was spread out. Dick and Sharon were new parents, and Gerry was in college back East.

  In her first few months away from home in the fall of 1962, Gerry had been living across the Potomac from Washington, D.C., as President Kennedy stared down the Soviet Union in a nuclear confrontation after the failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba.

  “Washington would have been the first place bombed,” she recalled. “I called my mom and asked what I was going to do. She said, ‘Well, we’re going to be with Mr. Busch. He has a bomb shelter and we’ll be there. Try to get there as best you can.’ ”

  Gerry said she felt “deserted and grown-up—all at once,” but it was nice to know that her parents were on Gussie’s ultimate A-list.

  The missile crisis was averted, but soon the nation had to cope with the assassination. While the grief was still raw, the new president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, asked Musial to become the special consultant to the president on physical fitness, replacing Bud Wilkinson, the former Oklahoma football coach. The job was partially a showcase for a celebrity like Musial, but it could have been an opportunity to influence policy.

  The Musials flew into Washington on February 27, 1964, for the ceremony. Stan alluded to the gymnastics programs of the Polish Falcons, and he also tried to sketch out a broader vision.

  “Calisthenics are fine but they are not the entire basis of physical fitness,” he said in spring training in March. “Exercise is only one phase. Games and other means of recreation are important, too.” He said he would concentrate on adults as well as children.

  Because the job paid a per diem of seventy-five dollars, Musial sometimes had to choose between making real money at his business and doing something more or less for the public good. He asked his friend Bob Stewart, the athletic director at St. Louis University, to be his liaison with the government, but Stewart did not have the Washington contacts needed for that role. Without an insider guiding him, Musial turned down most invitations for personal appearances all over the country.

  There was also more politics than Musial would have liked. Once he was told not to make a public appearance with a baseball official from Rochester, New York, because the man happened to be a Republican.

  “LBJ had Stan lobbying a Polish congressman for one thing or another,” recalled Tom Ashley. “Stan would call and say, ‘I’m doing this because the president asked.’ After a while he got word to the president that he didn’t want to do that.”

  Johnson was busy expanding the war in Vietnam, lobbying for civil rights, and waging a so-called war on poverty, all at the same time. He had his priorities, and physical fitness was not among them. He was a dominant personality who tended to put his hands on senators to manipulate them into doing his will. There is no indication he and Musial ever meshed.

  “But didn’t you find Johnson vulgar?” somebody asked Musial in 1976.

  “No,” Musial said politely, “because we only talked politics.”

  MUSIAL STILL gravitated to the ballpark, spending more time than was healthy in the press box, which in St. Louis pretty much meant hot dogs and beer. One night he found himself in the hospital, being treated for indigestion and exhaustion.

  Feeling better, Musial had a front-row seat for the bizarre doings of 1964. In June, Devine engineered a trade for an outfielder named Lou Brock, who was underperforming with the Cubs, and Keane installed Brock in left field and let him run. However, with the Cardinals still eight games out of first place in mid-August. Busch fired Devine and replaced him with Bob Howsam, a baseball man but not a Cardinal—a very big thing in that insular town.

  Keane went around during the late season with a tight smile on his face, knowing that Rickey planned to bring in his old pal Leo Durocher after the season. With Durocher warming up his lungs in the managers’ bullpen, Brock ignited the Cardinals while the Phillies staged one of the epic collapses in pennant race history, losing 10 straight games and blowing a 6½ game lead with 12 games to play.

  On the final Wednesday night, the Cardinals surged into first place by beating the Phillies in chilly St. Louis.

  As reporters crowded into Keane’s tiny office—and I was there—a door opened and in popped Branch Rickey, rumpled suit, whiff of cigar, thick eyeglasses, pulpit timber: “Johnny Keane, you’re a gosh-danged good manager,” Rickey enunciated.

  Rickey’s praise reverberated during the next two weeks as the Cardinals won the pennant and then beat the Yankees in the World Series.

  “They finally got a good left-fielder,” Musial would tell everybody, laughing and displaying not the slightest bit of remorse about his retirement. His team won. That was what counted.

  The Cardinals’ victory surely could be dated back to Devine’s hiring of Keane in 1961 and Keane’s handing the ball to Gibson. Asked why he kept going to the weary Gibson in those final days, Keane said one of the finest things I ever heard from a manager. It still brings chills when I type it: “Because I had a commitment to his heart,” Keane said.

  Immediately after the Series, Busch told Keane he would be back in 1965, upon which Keane informed Busch that he most certainly would not. The next day Keane turned up in New York to take the Yankees job, after Yogi Berra had been pushed out.

  Somewhat in shock, Busch consulted his advisors for candidates to be manager. Howsam was pushing Charlie Metro, a baseball man but not a Cardinal, while Musial recommended—who else?—his car-pool buddy, Red.

  “I knew Red needed experience—we all did—but we felt he was the best man for the job,” Musial said a few years later.

  The Cardinals did not win pennants in Red’s first two seasons, but the team remained near the top. Musial enjoyed schmoozing in the clubhouse now that Red was manager, but he also found time to concentrate on retirement. He had always talked about doing things other Americans did, so he visited the Indy 500 once and became something of a regular at the Kentucky Derby.

  He also spent time on business. The boy who had turned crimson when he had to speak in school, the teammate who dreaded making a clubhouse speech, now used his familiar crouch as a way of being himself—Stan the Man in a suit and tie, Stanley the entrepreneur.

  Rather than spending more than half a year in clubhouses and dugouts, Musial suddenly had more time to socialize. Somebody who was around him in those years described Musial at a gathering: quiet, reserved, off in a corner. Asked if he was going to play the harmonica, Musial would insist no, not tonight. But later in the evening there would be a shift of mood.

  “There were times I would see this wonderful explosion of energy and laughter in Stan,” the acquaintance said. “You’d see it when he played harmonica, or really got into a story or enjoyed a good laugh with a Ted Williams or someone.

  “He had this explosive energy, this spirit that I believe must have been key to his brilliant batting—coiled up and then explode on the ball. And what I am trying to say is that when I got to see him a bit, it looked like much of that may have become muted or submerged as he would kind of withdraw or sit silently saying little until someone came up to him and ask questions or want an autograph.”

  Musial was a man of moderation but also a man of the times—the age of the social drink, the patter that it must be five o’clock somewhere in the world so let’s have a martini, or a bourbon, or a beer.

  By all accounts, Stanley liked a drink now and then. Some of his best days had come after a drink or two. The five home runs in a doubleheader in 1954 came after a fun night with neighbors. In 1960 he went out in Manhattan on the eve of the All-Star Game in Yankee Stadium and would have been perfectly happy sitting out the game, but he pinch-hit a single in the late innings. In 1963 only a few hours af
ter celebrating his first grandchild by sipping White Russians, Grandpa hit a homer.

  Throughout his retirement, Musial would often discover that spare harmonica in his pocket later in the evening. In the early nineties, while recovering from prostate cancer, he traveled to a golf outing for Mickey Mantle’s charity and played “The Wabash Cannonball” onstage—much too long, as far as Mantle was concerned. The Mick lurched onstage and essentially hauled Musial off, both of them giggling as they departed.

  A COUPLE of years after his retirement, Stan and Lil moved up, buying a house farther out in the county, in tony Ladue, near the Old Warson Country Club. This was a huge step for a couple from Donora, but they could afford the space, the privacy, and the feel of having made it.

  The new house was hidden from the road, essentially a ranch but a very large one, much more formal than the suburban ranch on Westway. There was even a service entrance for deliveries and help. In one wing was a living room with a piano, and over the fireplace was a portrait of the six family members, a photograph painted over in oils. There was a large pantry off the kitchen, a formal dining room, and a den. In another wing were four bedrooms, more than enough for a family whose children were moving away. And in the back was a porch where Stan liked to watch the birds and smoke his cigar, and beyond that a swimming pool.

  The house was something of a shock to Gerry, who was used to walking around the old neighborhood and waving at friends across the modest lawns. Now the Musial family was secluded.

  “When you’re in that house, somebody can come in the driveway,” Gerry said. “You can be in the bedroom and not really know.”

  The kids decided the house was haunted by the builder, a man of French origin who had died before he could move in. Strange things happened there. Gerry had an old music box with a dancing ballerina on top who had been dormant for a decade or more. One time she was visiting her parents and was all alone in the new house when the music box started up and the ballerina began twirling in place.

  “I’m a scaredy-cat,” Gerry said. “I don’t like being alone; it’s so isolated. One time I left the TV on and when I went back it was off. People have heard cabinets opening and closing. We’ve all heard something. We think he’s benign. A benign ghost.”

  While Stan and Lil’s new house had a formal design to it, they were not formal people.

  “Their house is like anybody else’s house—not ostentatious, but beautiful,” said Helen P. Nelson, a friend who visited several times. “When you walk in, you feel very comfortable, you don’t feel, ‘Oh, geez, I can’t sit on that chair.’ No. A real warm home. And a lovely swimming pool. A finished basement where he’s put a picture of every person he’s ever met. And that was neat. In the kitchen, a few seats from the old Busch Stadium.”

  Some men retire and decide they will show the little lady how to run a household. That was definitely not the case with Stanley. This was Lil’s house, and she made it work for her husband.

  “Lil is one of a kind,” Nelson said. “She’s protective of Stan.”

  “Lil is one of the finest ladies you ever been around,” said Danny Litwhiler, Stan’s former teammate, who became a renowned coach at Florida State and Michigan State.

  “Lil is very thoughtful,” said Pat Litwhiler, who married Litwhiler after his first wife, Dorothy, died in 1971. “Lil continually sends things to Danny. I don’t think Stan ever answers the phone.”

  Without a clubhouse or neighbors a few steps away, the gregarious Stanley needed an outlet.

  “Dad loved to go out in the yard,” Gerry said. “Lord knows what he was doing. Drive the tractor, pick up a couple of fallen tree branches.”

  Gerry did not think her father actually cut his own grass. She was surprised to learn, years later, that Stanley had been cutting the lawn of his closest neighbor, Robert R. Hermann, at one point the president of the National Professional Soccer League. Stanley started out mowing his own expanse—and kept going.

  One day Hermann entertained Pelé, the great Brazilian soccer player, who was finishing up his career with the New York Cosmos.

  “He came to my house and said I had a beautiful lawn, and asked in pretty good English who cut my grass,” Hermann said. “I told him it was Stan Musial and was surprised that he actually knew who he was. Charming fellow.”

  Hermann had a paddle tennis court, with high screens on four sides creating a 360-degree game. There was action every Sunday. One day only two other players showed up, so Hermann called Musial and told him to come over.

  “He said, ‘Bob, I’ve never played tennis in my life,’ ” Hermann recalled, “and I told him to come over anyway and I showed him how to hold the racquet. We had some pretty good players. One of our regulars was the sixteenth-best college player and second-best doubles player.

  “In thirty minutes, Stan was the best player on the court. Just a natural. He was pretty darn good. Which made sense, when you think of it.”

  Until Hermann moved in 1974, Musial was a regular in the game, and the wives would come around and have a drink afterward. Once in a while a neighbor would throw a party for fifty or a hundred people, and Stan and Lil fit right in, Hermann said.

  Musial’s grandson Tom Ashley Jr. had never heard about Stanley’s mowing the neighbor’s lawn, but he said, “I’m sure it happened. My grandfather loved tinkering on his mower and tractor. I think it was a great way for him to relax. He showed all the grandkids how to drive it, with him next to us.”

  Ashley thought about his active grandfather for a moment and added, “It took me years to realize that he is just a country boy at heart, without the accent.”

  NOT PARTICULARLY caught up in the national turmoil over Vietnam and civil rights, Musial received a blast of reality in 1966 when he was invited to tour Vietnam with Brooks Robinson, Joe Torre, Henry Aaron, Harmon Killebrew, and the great Yankee broadcaster Mel Allen. This was no meet-and-greet opportunity in a secured camp.

  “He was up near the front lines with bullets flying,” his son-in-law said.

  “It was pretty dangerous over there,” said Colonel James Hackett, the chief of detectives in St. Louis and one of Musial’s best friends. When he got home, Musial told Hackett about flying in a helicopter with no doors and asking himself, “What the hell am I doing over here?”

  The other players on the trip confirmed this was no armchair experience.

  Brooks Robinson had idolized Musial while growing up in Little Rock, listening to games over KMOX and catching the Cardinals’ annual exhibition with the White Sox on their way north. In many ways, Robinson was the Stan Musial of Baltimore. Now Robinson got to see his role model in the middle of a war.

  “We would split up each day and go to different places,” Robinson said. “I got to meet the Montagnards. I remember climbing up in a tree hut and drinking whatever they drank, like sake. We flew in helicopters and C-130s.

  “I got to fire a howitzer into North Vietnam. We went all the way from the Delta to Da Nang. We visited a lot of hospitals. It was very inspirational. Those guys were heroes to me.”

  Robinson told of visiting a hospital with Musial and chatting with an American soldier who had lost both legs to a bomb.

  “Stan went over to him and said, ‘Hi, I’m Stan Musial of the St. Louis Cardinals,’ and the soldier said, ‘Oh, Mr. Musial, I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you.’

  “And that’s where I lost it,” Robinson admitted.

  In Da Nang, the players had lunch with General William Westmoreland, the commander of the U.S. operation in Vietnam, and dinner with Lieutenant General Lewis Walt, the commanding general of the III Marine Amphibious Force. Shortly after that, the general’s quarters were bombed by the Vietcong. Musial was still talking about that bombing when he got home a few weeks later.

  Torre, who later became very close to Musial when he managed the Cardinals, remembered that he was not particularly frightened in Vietnam.

  “I was just young and stupid,” Torre explained. But Aaron, Allen,
and Musial had the good sense to be, as Torre put it, “uncomfortable.”

  “You saw tracer bullets every night,” Torre said. “We were in that outpost and every night you could hear that harassment fire going off.”

  When Musial got home, a reporter described him “shaking like a leaf” as he talked about his adventures. Musial called it a “rewarding experience,” saying, “We were up every day at six o’clock, taking pictures, signing autographs, shaking hands all day and then at night, showing films of the All-Star Game,” but he was graphic about the dangers. “We flew over areas held by the Charlie,” Musial added, noting that without helicopters, “we couldn’t have got around,” but also well aware that the open helicopters would not necessarily shield anybody from a bullet coming up from the jungle.

  “I’ll tell you,” his son-in-law said, “he was a pacifist”—not necessarily in his politics but in his innards.

  Musial had great respect for the troops he met in Vietnam, but he did not lead cheers for the mission. He had seen the war that LBJ expanded, and had enough sense to be scared.

  40

  STANLEY RUNS THE TEAM

  MUSIAL TURNED his Vietnam experience into a punch line. Asked about his duties as an “advisor” to the front office, he said: “The Cardinals have been sending men to look over our players in Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic.”

  But where did they send Stanley?

  “To Vietnam,” he said.

  Within a few months, he was back in baseball. Bob Howsam, tired of the tight control by the brewery, left the Cardinals early in 1967 to go work for the Reds. Ever loyal, Musial agreed when Busch asked him to take over. He may have underestimated the job, since he said he would try to remain as the presidential physical fitness advisor while running the Cardinals, but he soon realized the need to concentrate on his club.

  When he resigned the fitness post, Musial had applied for only 114 days of his stipend in nearly three years in the position, compared to 203 days by Wilkinson in his first three years.