Baseball History Podcast

Welcome to the Baseball History Podcast: Featuring This Week in Baseball History, baseball dictionary and a tour of baseball cities.  I’m your game announcer Bob Wright.

This is game 10 of the 2009 baseball season

But let’s start with a short pre-game show:

On March 5, 2006 I posted the first Baseball History Podcast.  The game featured Stan Musial, the Dictionary phrase Active List, and a tour of the Salem Avalanche.  The total length of the game was 8:22 with the Musial bio lasting a total of 2:45.

Since then I have posted 234 games with this one being 235.  I have featured 118 Baseball Hall of Fame ballplayers in 224 biographies.  I have had over 1 million downloads and have been featured on the front page of iTunes numerous times.  In the three years of BHP I have spent over 700 hours working on the games; that comes out to about a month’s worth of time non stop.

When I first started BHP I was posting two games per week during the season and one game per week during the rest of the year.  I now do one game per week all year round.  I have never missed a game although I have been late two or three times due to technical difficulties.  I have never taken any time off for vacations, work, or family responsibilities; it has always been, at least, one game per week.

I just finished listening to that first show for the first time in close to three years.  I know that the sound quality has improved and the content has expanded.  I think that my delivery has even improved, or I hope it has.

I have connected with many of you listeners of BHP and have had the wonderful experience of having some listeners even contribute to games.  The emails, comments, and tweets that I have received have been a wonderful payment for my time and effort.

For the last few months I have been thinking about redoing some of those first few games.  I knew there was additional information that I would include if I was assembling the game for the first time.  Therefore, as a part of the third anniversary of Baseball History Podcast, I would like to present this complete redo of Game 001: Stan Musial.

Because of the length of the biography I am breaking this into a two game series with both games posting this week.  Both games will only include the biography without the dictionary or tour.

So now, let’s play ball!

In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 1 week of March.

March 4

1948 Stan Musial ends his hold out signing a contract for $31,000 with the Cardinals.

Stanley Frank Musial, nicknamed “Stan the Man,” was born November 21, 1920 in Donora, Pennsylvania.

According to some sources, his birth name is Stanisłaus Franciszek Musiał but his father, who was a Polish immigrant, gave him the nickname Stashu, which was quickly shortened to Stash, usually pronounced “Stush.”  Once he entered public school, Stash’s name was Anglicized to Stanley or Stan.

Worth noting is that family and locals pronounced Musial “Mu-shill” as opposed to “Mu-si-al,” as Stan came to be known..

Few players in the history of baseball have matched the accomplishments and consistency of Stan Musial.  Even fewer so engendered the admiration and affection of fans, not only at home but in every ballpark on the circuit, as did this Polish-American from a steel-mill town in Pennsylvania.

Noted baseball announcer Vince Scully had the following to say about Stan:  “How good was Stan Musial? He was good enough to take your breath away.”

Signed as a pitcher when he was seventeen, Musial was 15-8 in two seasons with Williamson, West Virginia, but the scouting report filed on the young southpaw recommended his release because he was wild and inconsistent.

Musial’s first year with Williamson didn’t foretell a brilliant career on the mound or at bat.  As a pitcher, he finished 6-6 with an Earned Run Average of 4.66 in 20 games.  What stuck out, and not well, were 114 hits, 80 walks, and 66 strikeouts in 110 innings.  Things weren’t much better at the plate, 16 hits in 62 trips to the plate for a .258 average, with 3 doubles, a homer, 7 strikeouts, and only 3 walks.  He was just 17 years old and was nowhere near his full height or weight, so that he might have been overmatched comes as no surprise.

Even though he was already playing minor league ball, Stan was also playing for Donora High. The Donora coach wise enough to know what he didn’t know and brought Chuck Schmidt to help coach the team.  Musial and Schmidt remained friends until Schmidt’s death.

Schmidt said of Musial that he “was a born natural.  Even then you could tell he was going to be one of the greats.”

Curt Flood, a teammate late in Musial’s career, had this to say about a man who worked to develop his inherent talents:  “Musial also helped–mainly by working as hard as he did on his own perfect swing.  If this immortal felt the need for frequent extra practice, how could I hope to prosper on less effort?”

Not all of Stan’s time was taken up with sports.  He was, of course, playing good basketball in the winter and pitching well in the spring and summer, helping lead his school teams to regional championships.
Some things had changed when Stan returned to Williamson in 1939.  No longer the Colts, the Williamson nine was now the Red Birds and part of the Cardinals’ organization.  Also, Musial was a year older, maturing nicely, and possessing more confidence.  With a better team behind him, he improved to 9-2 in just 13 games, 12 of them starts, and 7 of them complete, but some signs suggested that he might not have a great future as a pitcher.  The 4.30 Earned Run Average in 92 innings was tempered by his surrendering only 71 hits; while his 86 strikeouts looked good, his 85 walks could have pleased nobody.

He was now playing the outfield when he wasn’t pitching, and his .352 average was almost 100 points better than his 1938 performance.  He showed some extra-base power with 3 doubles and 3 triples but again had just 1 home run.  Two red flags emerged from the numbers: 16 strikeouts and 1 walk. The young man clearly had a lot to learn.

Now 19, Musial was eager for the 1940 season to begin.  Having graduated from high school, he’d be able to play a full season for the first time.  The Albany ball club, which owned his contract and had optioned him to Williamson in 1939, now sold him to Asheville, North Carolina, of the Class B Piedmont League.  Following spring training Asheville optioned him to the Class D team in Daytona Beach, Florida.  His salary rose from seventy to one hundred dollars a month, but the demotion proved a disappointment to Musial, who, believing he could pitch at B level.

Disappointment aside, 1940 would be a pivotal year for the young man, who would come under the wing of one of the great benefactors of his life, Daytona Beach manager Dick Kerr.  He and Musial hit if off from the start.

Musial gave everything he had under the watchful eye of the fatherly Kerr and improved dramatically.  He finished 18-5 with a 2.62 Earned Run Average, but there were danger signs.  Although he had given up only 179 hits while striking out 176, he had also surrendered 145 walks and 43 unearned runs.  Nevertheless, he was the top southpaw in the Florida State League.

Since the team had only 14 men on the roster, Stan–and the other pitchers–would play in the field when he wasn’t pitching.  It was there that his talents really began to show.  Hitting line drives all over the field, he batted .311 in 113 games, striking out just 28 times in 405 at-bats.  Ten triples and 70 Runs Batted In balanced out his meager 17 walks and single home run.

Everything came crashing down on August 11 in the second game of a doubleheader against Orlando.  Playing center field, Musial went after a low, sinking line drive to left center, and attempted a somersault catch, something he’d been able to do from an early age.  This time, though, his spikes caught, sending him shoulder-first to the ground.  The pain and swelling in his shoulder were almost immediate, and it was soon determined that Musial was finished as a pitcher.

Fortunately for all concerned, Kerr and Branch Rickey before him had seen the obvious:  Stan Musial was not a pitcher, he was an outfielder.  Because of the injury, his throwing arm would prevent him from becoming a so-called “five-tool player”; he could certainly hit, hit for power, run, and field, but he would compensate for the throwing weakness by getting rid of the ball quickly and accurately.

Musial’s stance was all his own, one he’d adopted because he believed it allowed him to cover the outside of the plate. Writing in the Baseball Research Journal of 2001, Paul Warburton describes it vividly:

A lefty, he dug in with his left foot on the back line of the batter’s box, and assumed a closed stance with his right foot about twelve inches in front of his left. He took three or four practice swings and followed up with a silly-looking hula wiggle to help him relax. He crouched, stirring his bat like a weapon in a low, slow-moving arc away from his body. As the pitcher let loose with his fling, “The Man” would quickly cock his bat in a steady position and twist his body away from the pitcher so that he was concentrating at his adversary’s delivery out of the corner of his deadly keen eyes. He would then uncoil with an explosion of power. His line drives were bullets.”

Early in Musial’s major league career teammate Harry Walker looked at him and said he’d never last with his stance. Hall of Fame pitcher Ted Lyons likened his plate appearance to a kid peeking around the corner to see if the cops were coming, a description that writers of the day would like; opposing pitchers thought he looked more like a coiled rattlesnake. Whatever Musial looked like, he would become a great hitter at the age of 21.

The Musial that the world came to know emerged in the 1941 season.  His work under Kerr had brought him a promotion to Springfield, Missouri, in the Class C Western Association.  Free from pitching and now a full-time outfielder, Musial proceeded to tear the circuit apart with a league-leading .379 average, 27 doubles, 10 triples, a league-best 26 homers, 94 Runs Batted In, and 100 runs scored in a mere 87 games.

Promoted after a July 20 doubleheader to Rochester in the Class AA International League, he kept up the pace, hitting .326 with 3 homers and 21 Runs Batted In in 54 games.  Clearly ready for the big leagues, he made his debut with the Cardinals on September 17, getting his first hit, a double, as St. Louis swept a doubleheader from Boston, 6-1 and 3-2.

In 12 games he hit .426, nailed his first home run, and as a bonus struck out just once in 47 at-bats.  In spite of Musial’s contributions, the Cardinals came up 2.5 games short of the pennant-winning Dodgers in a wild finish to a close race.

The 1942 Cardinals were so good that they stormed the National League, winning 106 games to finish two games ahead of the Dodgers.  They then polished off the Yankees, winners of 103 games themselves, in a five-game Series that was considered an upset at the time.  Musial made a solid impact with 10 homers, 72 Runs Batted In, and a .315 average that was second to Enos Slaughter’s league-best .318; although some sources list Boston’s Ernie Lombardi with a .330 average as league leader, but he had only 309 at-bats.

Musial started the season in April batting second.  By mid-May he was hitting third.  After some shuffling around in the third through sixth spots in the lineup for about a month, Musial settled into the cleanup spot in late June, remaining there the rest of the season and through the World Series.

The Cardinals’ confidence was well placed.  Stan’s 32 doubles and 10 triples showed that he got out of the box fast even with his unique peekaboo stance.

Musial didn’t have a good Series against the Yankees, hitting just .222 with a double and a Series-best four walks.  He was of no help in Game One, a 7-4 loss which the Cardinals almost pulled out with a furious rally in the bottom of the ninth, making the first and third outs of the inning. However, he drove in the winning run in the bottom of the eighth in Game Two, as the Cardinals rallied from a deficit to win, 4-3.

With many stars off fighting the war in 1943, Musial established himself as the premier

player in the game.  Stan led the league in hitting with a batting average of .357.  He also led the league in slugging, on-base percentage, hits, doubles, triples, and various other categories in what would be the first of a string of years amassing eye-popping statistics.  Not surprisingly, Musial’s performance on another pennant-winning team led to his first Most Valuable Player award.  Once again, though, he didn’t fare well in the Series, as the Yankees took the Cardinals in five games.  He batted just .278 with no extra-base hits.

For Musial and the Cardinals the 1944 season was largely a repeat of the previous two.  The Cardinals won 100 games for the third straight year, a feat previously achieved only by the 1929-1931 Athletics and later duplicated by the 1969-1971 Orioles and 2002-2004 Yankees.

Musial hit .347 and led the league in hits, doubles, on-base percentage, and slugging while increasing his Runs Batted In total to 94 and walks to 90.

Meanwhile, the St. Louis Browns, perennial doormats of the American League and landlord of Sportsman’s Park, which they shared with the Cardinals, sneaked past the war-decimated powers of the league to win their first, and last, pennant of the twentieth century.

Musial had his best Series as the Cards defeated the Browns in six games.  He tied for the Series lead with 7 hits that included 2 doubles and his only Series home run while hitting .304.  More important, he turned the Series around in Game Four after the Browns had surprisingly taken two of three games.

Musial enlisted and entered the Navy on January 22, 1945, spending the next thirteen or so months in the service.  He spent much of his stint playing ball and never saw combat.  At Pearl Harbor he played in an eight-team league that was largely staffed with major-leaguers.

Assigned to Bainbridge, Maryland, for basic training, Musial got into a few games and played first base for the first time, not knowing it would become his second position.  Upon completion of basic, he was sent to Shoemaker, California, Naval Base and then to Honolulu where he was assigned to Special Services to serve with a ship repair unit.

This is how his job was explained, “His job was to run a liberty launch transporting men and officers from the dock out to the ships needing repair and back.  He did this in the morning and played ball in the afternoons.  He was named to the 14th Naval District’s all-star team while playing for the ship repair unit team.  Musial was still stationed in Hawaii when VJ Day occurred.”

One aspect of Musial’s wartime service had an impact on his later career:  Since his fellow sailors wanted to see home runs, he made a slight adjustment to his stance that gave him more power.

For Part two of this biography, check your ticket for BHP Game 0911

Most of this biography comes from the Baseball Biography Project on the SABR web site.  The biography was written by Jan Finkel.

If you would like to a part of Baseball History Podcast, submit your written contribution for the tour segment.  I will only be doing the tour when one is sent in by a listener.  You can do the segment on any stadium or team; past or present; Minor League, Major League, Negro League or any league outside of the US.  Write about 1 page in a conversational tone, send it to me, I will record it, and you will get the credit.

You can email me at baseballhistory@gmail.com.

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Look for the new BHP web site at Baseball History Podcast at baseballhistorypodcast.com.

Well, that’s it for today’s game of Baseball History Podcast.  I’ll see you later at the ballpark.