Stan the Man

Stan The Man 

By Lawrence W. Reed

At the 1962 All-Star baseball game in Washington, D.C., President John F. Kennedy threw out the first pitch. When he greeted outfielder Stan Musial of the St. Louis Cardinals, he said, “A couple years ago they told me I was too young to be president, and you were too old to be playing baseball. But we fooled them.”

What a thrill it must have been to sit in the stands that day! Those who were there witnessed the talents of some truly big names in the sport. Aside from Musial, you would have seen Roberto Clemente, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Orlando Cepeda, Bill Mazeroski, Jim Bunning, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Dick Groat, Roger Maris, and Mickey Mantle.  

For this short commentary, I want to focus on Stan “The Man” Musial. He was a great player but also a sterling example of men of Polish ancestry who made it big in American baseball. (Poland, as many of you already know, has long been very special to me.) A decade ago, another author named Major Dan compiled his own list (complete with video shorts) of a dozen of the best Polish American baseball players and ranked Stan Musial #1. He wrote,

This Hall of Famer played his entire career for the St. Louis Cardinals (22 years), and when he retired, he had more batting records, including a career .331 batting average with 7 batting titles, than any player in history besides Babe Ruth.  (Many of his records were later passed by Hank Aaron and Pete Rose.)  Musial was of such character that after his playing days, he was voted the most trusted athlete/spokesman.  His 24 All Star Games are tied for 1st of all time.  He was also the model of reliability, having the longest continuous playing streak without a day off besides Lou Gehrig.  

In response to the question, “How good was Stan Musial?”, the late veteran sportscaster Vin Scully said, “He was good enough to take your breath away.”

Musial’s birthplace was Donora, Pennsylvania. That would be less than an hour’s drive from my hometown of Beaver Falls, if only Pittsburgh wasn’t smack in between. His Polish immigrant father, Lukasz, arrived in the U.S. in 1910 at the age of 16. Historic markers and even a bridge honor Stan in the Donora area, but he is best known and remembered in St. Louis, Missouri, where he signed a contract with the Cardinals in 1938.

Several good biographies chronicle Musial’s amazing baseball career, interrupted briefly by World War II when he served in the U.S. Navy. George Vecsey’s Stan Musial: An American Life is among the best. So is Wayne Stewart’s Stan the Man: The Life and Times of Stan Musial. Every biography of this unforgettable American athlete stresses his appealing personality and sterling character. He may well be the finest gentleman the sport ever produced—a humble and generous man, devoted to his faith and family, and from whom endless, quiet acts of kindness poured out naturally.

In The Saturday Evening Post in 2011, Diana Denny remembered him in glowing terms: “an all-around nice guy, a baseball hero who’s a decent, likeable person,” and “one of the last untarnished icons in baseball history.”

Bob Costas, in his moving eulogy for Stan, noted his good-naturedness, graciousness, and boundless integrity. Because of Stan, Costas said, “We understood that it’s more important to be appreciated than glorified, to be respected than to be celebrated, to be understood and loved than to be idolized, and that friendship is more important than fame.” When integration finally came to Major League Baseball in the late ‘40s, Stan couldn’t have been more welcoming to black players. Costas quotes the great Braves’ hitter, Hank Aaron, who said, “I didn’t just like Stan Musial. I wanted to be Stan Musial.”

Take a look at this short video clip of Stan, late in life, playing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” on his harmonica. You’ll glimpse a bit of the genuineness and charm of this guy. And read a biography or two about Stan—you’ll learn as much about being an honorable and admirable human being as you will about baseball.

Stan Musial never forgot his Polish heritage. He was rightfully proud of it, but he was just as proud of the fact that America gave him and so many other Polish immigrants the opportunity to excel and succeed. Remember that in the year after he signed with the Cardinals, Poland was brutally invaded by Nazi Germany and then after World War II, it was subjugated by the “Evil Empire” for more than four decades. Stan lived to see the glorious events of 1989, when Poles liberated themselves from Soviet-imposed tyranny.

I recently discovered a book to which I enthusiastically bestow my highest recommendation. Titled A History of the Polish Americans by John J. Bukowczyk, it brims with tributes to Polish courage, entrepreneurship, and patriotism. Any reader of it would surely be amazed at the thriving civil society institutions that Polish immigrants to America created. Many of them became more American than a lot of Americans, more appreciative of the freedoms here than natives who took those freedoms for granted.

In Bukowczyk’s epilogue, you’ll find an excerpt from an essay written for a Reader’s Digest contest in the 1950s by a young Polish-American in Hamtramck, Michigan. I dug around the Internet and found that the writer’s name was Robert W. Kopek. He died in 2003, ten years before Stan Musial passed away in 2013 at the age of 92. I don’t know if Stan ever met Mr. Kopek but I know he shared the sentiments of Kopek’s essay:

I am proud that I am a Pole—and for good reasons. My Polish ancestry entitles me to a share in a history that is rich in God-fearing heroes and heroines who have championed the cause of liberty, peace and freedom; of honesty and justice; of equality and brotherhood…Yes, I am proud I am a Pole—for a good Pole has every right and reason to be a good American.

Thank you, Poland, for giving us the Musial family. May we never forget what a fantastic example of sterling character that Stan the Man was!

For additional information:

A History of the Polish Americans by John J. Bukowczyk

Famous Polish American Baseball Stars by Major Dan

FEE’s President To Receive Order of Merit

Stan Musial: An American Life by George Vecsey

Stan the Man: The Life and Times of Stan Musial by Wayne Stewart

Remembering Stan ‘the Man’ Musial by Diana Denny

Bob Costas Eulogy for Stan (video)