Stan the Man
Posted: May 22nd, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 21 Comments »
Here in St. Louis getting ready for a full weekend of Royals-Cardinals action. And our first thought: Man was Stan Musial good.
No, I mean really good. Sure, I wrote about a lot of that here. But think about this … the man banged out 3,630 hits, more than 700 doubles, won seven batting titles. He led the league at least once time in — deep breath here — hits, doubles, triple, runs, RBIs, walks, average, on-base percentage, slugging, total bases, extra base hits, hit-by-pitch, OPS, OPS+, intentional walks and runs created (every year but one from 1943 to 1953).
And he did it with that teensy, weensy, wittle bat celebrated on his statue.
What is that, a salami? French bread? What? It’s remarkable. No wonder they called him The Man.
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Joe the Pro.
I have a hard time imagining Musial not batting from atop an eight-foot block of granite.
I never saw him play but I’ve talked to old-timers who did and the look in their eyes… you knew — they knew — they’d seen something special.
Even moreso are the people who only saw Stan the Man on the radio, back in the days when big league baseball extended no farther west than the banks of the Mississippi River. That wonderful radio network reached out into the hinterlands and Musial Magic became as clear in their minds as anything you could imagine seeing in person.
The George Brett years were wonderful in Kansas City. But there’s something even extra-wonderful about Stan the Man.
I love me some St. Louis.
I remember buying my first baseball glove with my dad in the early seventies. Dad was pretty excited about finding–and insisted upon buying–the “Stan-the-Man” glove that we found at the store. I had never heard of him.
Guess dad knew something after all.
It’s a wiffle bat.
As good as Albert Pujols has been in his career, among many here in St. Louis, myself included, he still pales in comparison to Musial.
Musial’s influence on Cardinals baseball is unlike any other player to one individual team with the exception of Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson.
If Musial had played in NY or Boston, there’s no doubt in my mind he’d be considered one of the top-five players in the history of the game. As it is, he has to settle for being the best the Cardinals have ever had. That’s nothing to shake a tiny bat at.
I hope this doesn’t seem sacrilege to St. Louisans, but it seems to me that while Beltran is not as outstanding a player as Musial was, Musial’s remarkable popularity and respect when he played (Bill James once concluded that he was liekly the most respected player, while playing, of the post-WW II era) while compared to Beltran, is a comment on how our values as a society have changed. Musial was, from everything I’ve read, quiet and respectful. He hit for power, but not POWER. Historically, he’s been overshadowed by his contemporary Williams, but he had a remarkably broad base of skills, he did everything well, and he was beloved. Beltran has a similar broad set of skills, pitched somewhat lower as a hitter (fielding and on the bases Beltran probably holds an advantage) and yet is subject to the nonsense from Steve Phillips and the many ignorant NY fans who don’t appreciate him…
My father grew up idolizing Musial, and it was made all the better when my grandparents became friends with Stan(they spent many a winter in St. Pete; staying at the same hotel as the Cardinals). They even had him personally autograph a picture to my father(which I inherited after my father passed away).
Even though I’ve gotten used to the “oh yeah; whatshisname was pretty good” line in regards to Musial over the years, it still baffles me that he is almost an afterthought when it comes to the best of all time.
Albanate: That’s great of your dad to get the Musial glove but you do realize that somehow in my mind that’s sort of like getting an autographed bat from Koufax or Yogi’s baserunning spikes.
I have the distinct honor to walk past that statue every Cards game I go to, and I always remove my cap, and insist others do so as well.
He is, after all, The Man.
The Man could play some honkin’ harmonica as well – Phil Linz-esque harmonica!
There is a contingent of fans in StL that don’t care for that statue. No disrespect to Stan, but that statue is second-rate.
It’s funny, I’m a west coast kid and have no particular connection to the midwest nor any particular love for the Cardinals (I kinda don’t like them actually), but man I freaking love me some Stan Musial. That guy was A MONSTER and nobody seems to care. It’d be sad if he didn’t seem so happy with how his life turned out.
And he spent his age 24 season in the military. . . .
To the guy above who posted the Beltran-Musial comparison — well, frankly, there isn’t one. Musial has a career OPS+ of 159. Beltran has never reached that mark in any single season, and his career mark is 119.
I think Beltran is under-appreciated and a really fantastic player, but comparing him to one of the game’s great all-time hitters at this stage is a bit silly.
How close is the comparison between Musial and Pujols?
First, the grammar. “He led the league at least once time…” should be “at least once” or “at least one time.” The rest, of course, is a celebration of Stan the Man, a ball player deserving of said celebration.
Pujols’ career OPS+ is 170, with his worst two seasons being his first two seasons (both above 150). He didn’t so much arrive as explode. But it looks like Musial had a *long* decline phase. Even though those years were well above average, his last five years (or even six) don’t really compare to the rest of his career. Cancel them out and he still gets 3,000 hits while getting his OPS+ close to Pujols (maybe passing him; more math than I’m willing to do right now).
To Loobs above:
Not only do some STL fans not like the statue, Stan the Man does not like the statue. He has frequently said his stance is wrong on that statue, and it is disproportioned. Apparently there’s another statue of him done by the same guy who made the statues of Jack Buck, Cool Papa Bell, etc. outside the stadium, and the new one looks much better, but the one of him seen above is still not going anywhere anytime soon.
“Here stands baseball’s perfect warrior. Here stands baseball’s perfect knight.”
As part of their rather broad (and sometimes silly) SportsCentury Top Ten lists, ESPN did one on “most underrated”. Stan the Man was #1 (i.e., most underrated).
I would have to agree. To me, he’s Ted Williams without the spitting at the fans and the monstrous ego. In fact, when I first started paying attention to baseball in the 50s, there were many, many articles about “Musial vs. Williams — who’s better?” They even had their first miserable seasons the same year (1959 — which was also Mickey Mantle’s first crappy season after becoming The Mick).
As a supplement to Joe’s list of categories Musial led the league in, consider his 1948 season: Musial led the league in (as Joe says, deep breath here): runs, hits, doubles, triples, total bases, RBI, batting average, slugging average, on-base percentage, and OPS+ (with a rating of 200!). He missed by ONE tying for the league lead in HRs (and thus the Triple Crown). As one writer put it in one of the many, many articles I read about him in my early fan days, “Musial led the league in everything except stolen [hotel] towels.”
And, of course, he is the man (as well as The Man) attached to one of my all-time favorite BB stats: for his career, he had 1,815 hits at home, and 1,815 hits on the road. No “Coors Park” effect for Stan The Man.
As a measure of the respect in which he was held, the “Stan The Man” nickname actually came from Brooklyn Dodger fans. Long before everyone and everybody was “The Man” (as in the obnoxious golf-fan yell, “You da man!”), fans in Brooklyn referred to Musial that way. When asked by a reporter, “Don’t you mean Stan is A man”? (more common usage back then), the response was, “No, Stan is THE man!” The rest, as the say, is history.
Hey Joe the link in your article doesn’t work anymore.
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