The Chris Moeller Archives

Stan always had the words for the moment. In his retirement, in that charming, elderly way, he collected these words to be repeated time and again as anecdotes, ones such as: the time the team arrived back at Union Station in St. Louis, May of '58, after having smacked his 3,000th hit at Wrigley Field in Chicago earlier in the day, he shouted to the throngs, "No school tomorrow." And when his wife shoved a fan who had been overly aggressive in pursuing an autograph from the slugger, he told her after, "You shouldn't have done that. That was my fan." When asked about his bad knee in old age, he always attributed the injury to having "hit too many triples." About his long-time roommate, fellow Hall-of-Famer Red Schoendienst, "The good thing about him was that he didn't snore." He always delivered each of these stories with a wide grin, very visibly amusing himself. Stan Musial could make himself spasm with laughter. He was "Stan the Man," definitely never "Stan the Deadpan."

I like the story of how he would sign autographs for people who simply knocked on the front door of his house in the St. Louis suburb of Ladue. It was the beat writer Kurkjian who said Musial promised him a signed picture in Cooperstown years ago, and then days later, asked him if he had received it. The Sporting News' Stan McNeal tells this one: "About 10 years ago—a couple of years after moving to St. Louis—my then-wife was having lunch with her boss in the same restaurant where Musial was dining. Her boss knew Musial well enough to introduce her. 'My husband is named after you,' she told him. 'Anyone who is named after me gets a bat,' he said matter-of-factly. Her brush with fame made a nice story at dinner that night, then was forgotten. Until two weeks later. Sure enough, a delivery truck pulled up to the house and out came a cardboard package that looked like a three-foot long shoebox. Inside was pure Adirondack ash. No receipt, no note. Neither was needed. The inscription said everything: 'To Stan McNeal, My namesake — (signed) Stan Musial, HOF69.'"

An online commenter posted another tale, almost too good to be true, last night of how he was supping in New Orleans' French Quarter one night during the week of the 1985 Super Bowl when a conga line of more than a dozen people danced through the dining room. The line was shockingly led by a recognizable face, that of Stan Musial, playing his harmonica, the best musical instrument known to man for carrying in the pocket of one's sport coat. And at the time of the '85 Super Bowl, Stan was already 65 years old.

On Deadspin, "CallMeOzZe" relayed this similar story Sunday, "I met Stan Musial at Paul Manzo's in STL. Everyone in the restaurant, clearly, recognized him, but it being the Midwest, no one approached him. As he left, he pulled out a harmonica and started playing "When the Saints" while stopping at each table. As he came to ours, my cousin started singing. He put down the harmonica long enough to say, 'Please. Don't sing.' I laughed so hard I choked on my Spaghetti Norma. I don't know anything about baseball, but I recognize character when I see it. RIP, Mr. Musial and thanks again."

And maybe that's the greatest legacy of Stan Musial. ESPN reporters say they're struggling to describe it. He's largely considered to be the most underrated great player of all-time-- a very incomplete assessment. Many of his batting records have now been surpassed. He is second in total bases lifetime, behind only Hank Aaron. He's fifth or sixth in several of the other big categories. He missed the 500 home run club by 25 long ones, and never led the league in that category for a single-season. Gehrig and Ripken had longer games played streaks. He didn't have the immortal hitting streak, like DiMaggio. He wasn't the last to do something specifically great, like Ted Williams. His greatness owed more to his lasting consistency, but what's a more important attribute for a baseball player than consistency? He won 7 batting titles, and 3 MVPs, and he led 3 world championship teams, but his great statistical accomplishments require almost a paragraph to describe. There are no magical numbers in his biography, except the one that's attributed most often to that amazing consistency-- 1,815 career hits on the road, 1,815 in St. Louis. But at his best, he was truly great-- 8th all-time among all players in a recent ESPN poll of baseball writers. The most impressive season to me is 1948, when he scored 135 runs, drove in 131, had 230 hits, 103 of those for extra bases, and against only 34 strikeouts.

He wasn't larger than life. Because he was too accessible. There was no air of mystery about him to intoxicate sportswriters. Indeed in retrospect, it's quite obvious that he bored them. He wasn't good copy because there was nothing salacious about him. No aspiring essayist could write an imaginative magazine piece about what Stan Musial was really like, because any person could see plainly what he was really like. There's no evidence that John Updike ever even set foot in St. Louis.

Stan's autographs are far too abundant to carry the financial value his batting records argue they should. He never married a Hollywood starlet or threw a punch at somebody in the bar. He never feuded with a teammate or even got ejected from a game-- and only five men in history played in more games. He could be found at Toots Shor's restaurant on team trips to New York City, and he palled around with Danny Kaye, Jack Benny (a similarly beloved personality), James Michener, Harry James, and his New Orleans buddy, trumpeter Al Hirt, who taught him everything he didn't know about music, but he didn't treat celebrities better than he did civilians.

What he was then was a man who possessed the human qualities admired by anybody who might not even understand sports in the slightest, like the man quoted above. Anybody who follows sports during this century, or reads a website, should have it burned upon their brain by now that having the talent to hit a little ball, run fast, or jump high, has no connection whatsoever with the talent for being an ace person. Musial was a man who struck it rich in life because of a strong motivation and a sweet swing, but somewhere along the journey, he missed the lesson about how you have to start holding people at arm's length when they begin to ask much more of you.

I've never been famous, yet I know very well anyway that if I were, I would never have the patience to allow people to interrupt my dinner at a restaurant for an autograph, for example. A celebrity would be justified in treating people like this shabbily, and still, there are no comments being posted online anywhere this weekend in which people claim they were treated rudely by him. And the internet is practically begging for these stories, what with the effuse praise that's being thrown around. Where are all of the rude people without self-awareness running down Stan Musial because of that one alleged incident in the early '90s outside the Galleria, or at Charlie Gitto's on The Hill? There are zero. This is an unbelievable thing. Even a guy like Michael J. Fox seems to piss off Rush Limbaugh for some reason. And how much was Stan loved and respected even by his opponents? He was inducted into the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Fame, and not because he ever played with them, but because he batted the shit out of them at old Ebbets Field. I tell you, the guy is not just known as "Stan.. the Man" because of a little rhyme and alliteration. If it was only that, we would have an historical figure in Germany known then and now as "Eichmann the Man."

St. Louis is a baseball town... arguably the baseball town, and this is all because of Stan Musial. Others argue for their favorite cities, but nobody ever argues that other team's fans are better behaved. If you're not a Cardinals fan, as most of my readers aren't, this reputation of ours might very well annoy you to no end. In some Cards fans, it might manifest itself as arrogant. It might come across as pointedly insincere when we cheer great fielding plays performed by the other team, and in truth, some of my brothers and sisters, I know, fail to pull off these traits as charming. But just so you know, the reason we're doing that is because we want to play the role of perfection demonstrated by Stan Musial. The older fans loved him in his Cardinals uniform. The younger fans came to love just as much the ever-smiling old gent wearing the bright red sports coat-- and also we love the older fans. Now can you imagine disappointing a most respectable hero by engaging in improper fan behavior? We want Stan to be thought of as our guy, our superstar, our ambassador, our warrior, our icon. Not every team has the marvelous fortune of having its best-ever player also being its best-ever person. It's the most selfish idea imaginable. We want you to think about us when you think about him.