He came back in 1946, and so did his team, winning its fourth pennant in its young star’s first five seasons of play. He was sent to the shipyard at Pearl Harbor but did not see combat. Musial won the first of his seven batting titles in 1943 the Cardinals made it to the Series again that season and in 1944, but not in 1945, when he didn’t play because he was serving in the Navy. That year, his team won 106 games to capture the National League pennant and then beat the New York Yankees in the World Series. Musial started the following season as the Cardinals’ left fielder. (John Sommers II/Reuters)ĭuring the 1941 season, he scampered up the ladder from Class C ball in Springfield, Mo., to the Class AAA International League franchise of Rochester, N.Y., and to the majors in September, where he hit. Louis Cardinals and the Detroit Tigers in St Louis, Missouri in this October 27, 2006, photograph. Louis Cardinal Stan Musial tips his hat to the crowd before he throws out the ceremonial first pitch prior to the start of Game 5 in Major League Baseball's World Series between the St. By then, however, he had earned a reputation as a fearsome batter.įormer St. After hurting his left shoulder while trying to make a diving catch, he was finished as a pitcher. Musial saved himself by taking over for an injured outfielder and hitting impressively. Pitching in a low-level minor league, he struck out roughly a batter per inning but walked almost as many, and one of his managers recommended that the young left-hander be let go. Musial signed a contract paying him $65 a month. He recalled learning to hit “with a broomstick and a ball of tape.” As a pitcher for mill teams and Donora High School, he caught the eye of a Cardinals scout. 21, 1920, in Donora, Pa., a mill town south of Pittsburgh. Of Polish and Czech extraction, Stanley Frank Musial was born Nov.
Musial retired in 1963 with so many firsts to his credit that he may have carved out a new category: the record for holding the most records at one time. After spending the entirety of his 22-year career with the Cardinals, Mr. 331, his total of 3,630 hits ranks fourth all-time, and he was a perennial all-star. Musial led the National League in batting seven times in the 1940s and ’50s and was voted the league's most valuable player three times. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that he had Alzheimer’s disease.
Stan “The Man” Musial, one of major league baseball’s most prolific hitters and a model of good sportsmanship during his Hall of Fame career with the St.
0 kommentar(er)
