Baseball Legends: Stan Musial (Cardinals 1941-1963)

“I love to play this game of baseball — I love putting on this uniform.” ~ Stan Musial, 1963

Stanley Frank Musial was born November 21st, 1920 in Donora, Pennsylvania.  He played with the St. Louis Cardinals his entire career, from the age of 20 until he retired at age 42.  Commonly referred to as “Stan the Man,” he really was the man.  Musial had a .331 lifetime batting average, 475 home runs, and 1,951 RBIs.  My favorite Musial stat, however, is that of his 3,630 hits he split them exactly into 1,815 at home, 1,815 on the road.

What was the key to his success?  “You wait for a strike, then you knock the shit out of it.”  Right.  Of course.

Those 3,630 hits put him at 4th all-time for career hits behind Pete Rose, Ty Cobb and Hank Aaron.  He also led the National League in batting average seven times and is 2nd all-time in career total bases at 6,134.  In collecting these monster batting statistics, Stan the Man also only had two seasons where he struck out more than 40 times and they were his last two years as an active player, where he struck out 46 and 43 times.

Stan’s eye for the ball and patience at the plate was amazing.  He was once quoted as saying, “I consciously memorized the speed at which every pitcher in the league threw his fastball, curve, and slider; then, I’d pick up the speed of the ball in the first thirty feet of its flight and knew how it would move once it had crossed the plate.”

In September of his last year playing ball, he became the first grandfather in major league history to hit a home run.

“He could’ve hit .300 with a fountain pen.”  ~ Joe Garagiola

Musial also managed to do alright in fielding.  In his 22 years, he played about 60% of the time in the outfield and about 40% of the time at first base.  His lifetime fielding percentage is .989, with a grand total in 22 years of 142 errors.  Not too shabby.

“He didn’t hit a homer in his last at-bat; he hit a single. He didn’t hit in 56 straight games. He married his high school sweetheart and stayed married to her, never married a Marilyn Monroe. He didn’t play with the sheer joy and style that goes alongside Willie Mays’ name. None of those easy things are there to associate with Stan Musial. All Musial represents is more than two decades of sustained excellence and complete decency as a human being.” ~ Bob Costas

His statue stands outside Busch Stadium.  He ranks 1st among all players (batters and pitchers) in Baseball Reference’s Hall of Fame Monitor Test.  He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1969 with 92.3% of the vote.  I’d like to know what the 23 “no” votes have to say for themselves.

See Musial’s career statistics at baseball-reference.com.

Written by Andrea at Bugs & Cranks, Ladies…, and Keeping Up Foreign Relations.