Named the bridge after him too! My Stan story is that my Grandfather supposedly played with him way, way, way back in the day - there’s a roll sheet or something my Grandmother still has. They lived right up the river from Donora.
And they share a birthday. Both were born on a November 21.
Junior was born in Cincinnati while Senior (who WAS born in Donora) played for the Reds.
A good friend of mine is a St. Louis native, but not much of a sports fan. His Facebook post from this weekend:
“Since I don’t follow or really even like baseball, when I met Stan, we talked harmonicas.”
I wish I knew more about Musial, but from all I’ve read (over the weekend, and in recent years), it sounds like he was both an outstanding athlete, and an outstanding human being.
Griffey Jr. was indeed born in Donora, PA. His father did not play for the Reds, or in the major leagues at all, at the time.
Griffey Sr. was ALSO born in Donora. Donora has a population of five or six thousand people, so a guy who played 2000 major league games, batted .297, made three All-Star teams and was a regular in one of the greatest lineups to ever take the field was merely the *third-best *player to be born in that tiny little mining town.
Where did you come up with that?
ETA: RickJay beat me to it.
A huge loss to the baseball world. Stan The Man was nothing but a damn fine ballplayer and a damn fine person.
RIP Stan Musial
Stan Musial was a better ballplayer then Joe DiMaggio. Jesus. Yes. Yankee fan. True.
But not better than Willie Mays.
Let’s not start that shit again, please.
For someone who started seeing baseball in 1946, Musial was it. Here is an interesting anecdote. When Bill James decided to study the question of who was the most valuable player of the 40s, he began by saying that the answer was a surprise. I said to myself, “You mean it wasn’t Musial!”. But of course it turned out to be. Bill James grew up post-Musial and could not imagine the aura that surrounded him. You really had to be there to appreciate him. Maybe we will look back on Jeter the same way.
Musial’s funeral on Saturday will be carried live on four TV stations, three radio stations, Fox Sports Midwest and streamed on a couple of websites.
He was my favorite oldtime player. The problem with him was what he was not.
1.He never aspired to be regarded as the greatest hitter.
2.He married his HS sweetheart not Hollywoods greatest sex symbol
3 He never suffered an injury that made you think what might have been.
The end of his life is not a cautionary tale…
4.He did not fight against the embodiment of a prejudice he faced at home.
5.He did not make the most famous putout in history.
6.He never held the most revered record in sports.
Not seeing the “problem.”
Adjusted Expectations
(the Fan and the “Man”)
The Pole Star stands, unmoving;Vin Scully once said, “Musial was so good, he took your breath away.”
(Cooperstown, 1982)
Serenely posed in bronze, with smiling face
Arrayed mid splendid peers behind a railing
Astonishing me in this demi-sacred place
A mean attempt to capture legend, failing.
O’er twenty years spring, summer, fall
like lightning your bat, like a whippet you ran.
You never looked back at an umpire’s call;
in Brooklyn, they dubbed you, “The Man”.
My wife and sons don’t comprehend
Why I stand and stare at your puckish visage
or wipe away tears I couldn’t defend
rememb’ring my dreams at an unfinished age.
(Baraboo, August 13, 1963)
Our wedding-day past, my two-day bride
was all any man could desire;
Yet I cried as I lay on the bed by her side,
Stan Musial intends to retire.
More twice then my age, defining the game
a solo surpassing the choir.
Could my world again be ever the same?
“The Man” said today, he’d retire.
We headed straight south onU.S. 34,
A Kinsellanian scene,
We watched my hero play once more
and double off the right-field screen.
Inward, I said, ‘it could be worse;
There are Others to enkindle me.
the Pole Star is gone,
but I’ll chart my course
with John Fitzgerald Kennedy’.
(Blue Island, November 24, 1963)
Twenty-one years I turned today.
I woke in shock and disbelief,
Jack Ruby made Lee Harvey pay
Tho’ he gained the People no relief.
Beyond the window on this moonless night
The glaring bulb above my head
Reflects red-rimmed eyes in its harsh, cold, light.
Another hero is dead.
Do you still see that boy saluting?
And hear the muffled drums?
I’ll see those flame tips fluting,
If my hundredth birthday comes.
(Central New York State, March, 1993)
Plunging through the night and the blinding snow.
At 2 a.m., on radio scan,
Out of the ether a voice I know,
an interview with… Stan the Man
They ramble and talk for an hour.
He plays a harmonica tune.
His voice retingling the itchy scar,
The clouds break, revealing the moon
I pop in a tape at 4 a.m.
Bob Seger and the Bullet Band
‘Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then’
‘Still runnin’ against the wind’
Most of those players would be mentioned before Musial in GOAT discussions.
And he wouldn’t have cared.
That’s the beauty of it. If you’d said to Stan Musial “Babe Ruth was the best ever” he probably would have said “I think so, too.” Musial was who he was and he wore it with grace and dignity. You can’t ask for more.
A couple more tidbits about The Man:
Re-read that last line. He stepped up to the plate 700 times and struck out 18 times. He had 48 doubles to go along with those 20 triples (220 total hits) that year.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1172566/index.htm
And here he is on What’s My Line (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsfm56autyk). It’s not that interesting as a game show. But he looks so nervous and self-conscious there, like someone who didn’t think he should be on TV. And I love he part where one of the panelists asks him if he was an infielder, and he nervously asks the host for help, probably thinking, “I played first base and all four outfield positions. How do I not screw this up?”
I never met him and never saw him play, but I miss him already.
“Whaddya say! Whaddya say! Whaddya say!”
Three. Three! :smack: