Stan the Man

"Here stands baseball's perfect warrior.  Here stands baseball's perfect knight."

Ford C. Frick, former Commissioner of Baseball.

Congratulations today to Stanley Frank Musial, better known to his adoring fans simply as Stan "the Man."  Today Musial will be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor that can bestowed upon an American civilian.

Once I was at a breakfast meeting for work at a restaurant in St. Louis. Some time after we had ordered our food, in walked Stan the Man. He sat down at the table right next to us and his food came almost immediately, a good five minutes before ours. Nobody minded.

I actually got to spend a little bit of time with him on another occasion. I had my mom's old 45 RPM record (if you're under the age of 35 or 40, maybe you can ask your parents what those are) of the 1961 song Stan the Man by Steve Bledsoe and the Blue Jays. You can listen to the song below and that of course is the 45 to the right.

I had always thought it would be neat to get the 45 autographed.  Though he quite often signed in public for no charge, he eventually set up a company named Stan the Man Inc. through which he sold autographs.  I called them one day and asked about getting the record signed. They said I could send it in, but I was leery to send it through the mail, and asked if I could drop it off instead. To my relief, they said that would be fine.

When I got there to drop it off, the guy I spoke with said, "You know, Stan's in back signing things. Why don't you just come back and have him sign it now?"  I was thrilled to gain a private audience with Stan the Man!  He turned out to be every bit as kind as his reputation suggested and we ended up spending about fifteen minutes talking with each other, mainly about the Cardinals' season which had just finished.

Musial is not just a great guy.  He is one of the greatest baseball players of all time.  He possesses my favorite statistic in all of sports: Of his 3630 career hits (fourth all time), exactly 1815 were at home, 1815 were on the road. What a testament to his consistency! When he retired, he held 17 major-league records, 29 National League records, and nine All-Star Game records.  Most of those records have since been eclipsed, but to Cardinal fans, he will always be "the Man."

Congratulations Stan!