Stan Musial (23 page)

Everybody knew that Rickey had instructed Robinson to hold in his competitive nature—“which was probably good,” Musial said. “Rickey was a good influence there, you know. And I think it kinda helped the situation.” But Musial understood Robinson’s temptations: “I think about that time, he was about fed up with all of this that was going on, you know, but he’d lose his temper every once in a while.”

In another version of that first-base meeting, Roger Kahn quoted Robinson telling Musial, “I wish I could punch the son of a bitch in the mouth,” the SOB being Slaughter. In a third version, Musial replied, “I don’t blame you.” There is also a version that somebody—perhaps even a Dodger—heard Musial’s alleged response and relayed it to Slaughter, who then beat up Musial in the clubhouse.

The fight version is bogus. The SOB remark, if it happened at all, took place in August, whereas the purported fight took place, or did not take place, in May. And if appendicitis was a cover story for a Musial-Slaughter fight, why did Dr. Hyland perform an appendectomy in October? This was after the weakened Musial had struggled through the season with a mere .312 average, down from .365, but he did hit 19 homers, a new personal high.

The real statistic is that the Cardinals finished five games behind the Dodgers. Robinson and Rickey had changed the order of the National League.

One detail that sounds realistic is that Robinson called Slaughter an SOB. The old war horse was sure that his identification with the rumored strike and the actual spiking kept him from being voted into the Hall of Fame until 1985, twenty-six years after his retirement. By that time, Musial was a power on the veterans committee that finally accepted Slaughter into the Hall—making it hard to work up a fight scenario after Musial’s proactive support of Slaughter.

In 1997, Slaughter returned to Brooklyn for the Robinson anniversary and found himself questioned sharply about the incident at first base.

“
I’m glad you asked that question,” Slaughter said, off and running as if it were still 1946. “I was there. I did not intentionally step on Jackie. It was a low throw and he reached for it, he did step off the base, and I did step on his ankle.”

Slaughter was in full stride now. “I can straighten out a lot of things. I played the game the way it’s supposed to be played. I came up with the Gashouse Gang back in ’38. We asked a lot and gave none. Jackie was the same type of ballplayer. He would run right over you. He was out to win.”

Up to his death on October 28, 2005, Bob Broeg conceded that some of the 1947 Cardinals “beat their gums” about a strike but insisted this was a natural reaction to living in a world grown more complicated. Broeg also noted that Slaughter spiked a lot of people.

Years later, Musial said: “
You have to admire a guy like Robinson going through what he did. He was pointed out, you know, as different, and ’course I’m sure a lot of the players and pitchers worked harder to try to not let him succeed against them, you know, and so, you know, you kinda gotta admire him in a way.”

Then he added, “So what I am trying to say is that I was glad Jackie came along. He was a great ballplayer. He made a big difference with our way of life in our society, and he opened up a lot of doors. And I am sure Robinson took more abuse than we really, really know about.”

No amount of political correctness can sugarcoat the rivalry. Robinson was just another reason the Cardinals despised and resented the Dodgers, more than ever once the Dodgers carried the mantle as good guys, progressives doing the right thing.

“
They were making such a big deal out of it, and we thought, really, they showed partiality to Robinson,” Marion said of the eastern media. “We thought he got the better of the deal, and we didn’t think that was quite right because we were baseball players, too.”

Marion added, “He was a heck of a ballplayer, and everybody didn’t like him, really. But he was a heck of a ballplayer, one of the best ballplayers I ever played against. And a great competitor.”

Asked if he ever chatted with Robinson, Marion said: “No. I tell you, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cardinals were kind of enemies, to tell you the truth.” He added, “We didn’t like anybody. Pee Wee Reese. We was always fighting. Me and Pee Wee were always fighting. And we just didn’t like each other at all, and we were great competitors and I don’t think we had any personal love for anybody in the whole club, and I’m sure they didn’t for us.

“Well, the only time you would talk to the people, when you pass in the infield, you know, you say something nasty to ’em,” Marion added, chuckling at the memory. “Yeah, you would. You know, you’d give a blast of something. It was very difficult times when the Dodgers had a great ball club and we did. We were always battling.”

Long afterward, Harry Walker always praised Robinson, calling him “one of the classiest guys, a college graduate, one of the great athletes of all time. And why Rickey picked him was that reason. The man had the fight in him to fight back. Not let them hammer him down. And he was a superstar doing it. He went to bat quite a few times before he got a hit. But when he opened up, he just was a superstar same as Babe and the other guys.”

In his mellow years as a manager, Harry Walker noted that taunting Robinson had proved extremely counterproductive.

“Well, it seemed to just rally him up. It didn’t do much damage and
so … the more you throwed at him, it seemed the harder he fought back at you. But he and Chapman had a row going on all the time. And Jackie would throw it back at him. You know he didn’t back up.”

In 1967, while managing the Pirates, Walker started eight players of color, blacks and Latinos. He would have started nine except that it was Dennis Ribant’s turn to pitch. After working as a hitting coach with the Cardinals, Walker became hunting buddies with Bill White, the outspoken African American first baseman of the Cardinals. He’d come a long way.

THEN THERE
was the question of what Robinson thought about Musial.

Julius Hunter, a broadcaster and writer in St. Louis who is African American and a friend of Musial’s, recalled:

However, Roger Kahn, who had the ear of both men, said Robinson believed Musial was too passive in those vital years.

“
He was like Gil Hodges,” Kahn quoted Robinson as saying. “A nice guy, but when it came to what I had to do, neither one hurt me and neither one helped.”

Hodges was the southern Indiana miner and former Marine who kept his thoughts to himself and was beloved in Brooklyn in somewhat the same way Musial was in St. Louis. There was never a trace of prejudice in Hodges. As everybody knew, Jackie Robinson had a mind of his own.

AND THEN
there was the story Joe Black told.

It was June 9, 1952, and Black was a rookie pitcher with the Dodgers, a college man who had played in the Negro Leagues and heard some racial stuff in his first two months in the major leagues. On his first appearance in St. Louis, Black did not know what to expect.

When Black was called in from the bullpen, the first batter was Musial.

“
After I warmed up and looked at Campy for the sign, out of their dugout come words like, ‘Hey, Stan, you shouldn’t have any trouble hitting the baseball with that big black background.’ ”

Black stepped off the mound, tempted to smile at the crude remark. Then he saw Robinson running over.

“That was sorta funny, wasn’t it?” Robinson said.

“Yeah,” Black said.

“Forget that son of a bitch,” Robinson said of the heckler. “Go get ’em.”

Black gathered his intensity for the man in the crouch, who popped up, although not out of kindness.

The next day, Black was taking the shortcut through the Cardinals’ dugout. Stan Musial was waiting for him.

“He pulled me over to the side and he said, ‘Forget those guys who call you names like that. You’re a good pitcher, you’re going to do okay.’ ”

Black went on to become Rookie of the Year and the first African American pitcher to win a World Series game.

After his pitching days, Black became an executive with Greyhound and was active in good causes until his death in 2002. In many of his speeches, Black would tell about the man who waited for him in the runway.

T
HE WAY
Ted Williams told it, the incident took place in 1960, after he had hit his 521st and last home run, the subject of the classic John Updike story in the
New Yorker
. Williams abruptly retired before the final road trip but returned to the ballpark to cover the World Series for
Life
magazine.

Rather than put Williams in the press box with his old friends, the knights of the keyboard, the magazine arranged for him to watch the game from a box seat.

Before one of the first games in Pittsburgh, a woman leaned over from the adjacent box and asked Williams to sign her souvenir program.

“You know, you’re one of my favorite players,” she said while he signed.

“Oh, is that right?” Williams replied.

“Yes,” she said. And then she added, “I’m Stan Musial’s mother.”

According to Williams, he told her he ought to be asking for
her
autograph.

IN MUSIAL’S
version, it happened at the 1959 All-Star Game in Pittsburgh, when he and Williams were both having subpar years.

Mary Musial was in a box seat before the game, asking for autographs, just another lady fan in the crowd. Williams came by and politely signed her program.

“And that is Stan Musial’s mother,” somebody told Williams.

Over the years, Musial always added that Williams sought him out at the batting cage to needle him about who really counted. Musial insisted that Williams was his mother’s second-favorite player—next to her son.

But whenever he told the story, Stanley made himself sound not quite sure he was really ahead of the Kid in his mother’s estimation.

T
HEY BECAME
a trio after the war—the two distant stars of the American League and the approachable man-next-door of the National League. Welcome to the club, Stanley.

From 1946, when all three came back from the war, until 1951, when DiMaggio retired, Musial was every bit their equal—some would say maybe even better. They remained linked into old age, refugees from a time when baseball was king, but somehow DiMaggio and Williams excited the public with their air of mystery and inaccessibility, whereas Musial grew more familiar and somehow smaller.

DiMaggio became known for what was perceived as dignity, or maybe it was hauteur. He performed in a city that believed it was the center of the universe, and DiMaggio had the ego to encourage that adoration. In retirement, he brokered a guarantee that he would always be introduced last at every Old-Timers’ Day in Yankee Stadium—the greatest living Yankee, after Ruth died in 1948—and he accepted all the booty and perks that went with it.

Williams was known for his edgy perfectionism, for ducking his long red neck when crossing home plate, for spitting in the direction of the fans or the press box. In his retirement he became a guru with a booming voice, John Wayne with batting theories.

Ever since that seething, handsome head was preserved in fluids in some nut-case regeneration laboratory, Williams has become a punch line for late-night comedians. Teddy Ballgame deserved better.

Musial had his own façade. It just happened to be a wall of good humor, a plastic bubble of harmonica solos and magic tricks. By the strange standards of today, if a man stood in a parking lot and signed autographs for urchins, how great could he have been?

Musial was a very different kind of superstar from the Kid and the Clipper. The latter two both arrived from California with expectations, which made their debuts and their moods and their demands all the more dramatic; Stanley came from inland, remained inland, and stroked his way into the formation of the Big Three.

Look at the photographs of the three greatest sluggers of the forties. They all had Depression physiques. Even in the bunchy flannel uniform of the time, DiMaggio is slim-waisted, slim-hipped, a gazelle who gracefully roamed the vast steppes of Yankee Stadium. In a classic photo, wearing only long white underpants, known as sanitaries, and waving a bat in the cramped Red Sox clubhouse, Williams is elongated, like a figure in an El Greco painting. Until late in his career, Musial’s ribs were clearly visible, the torso of a boy who never had enough to eat.

Bob Feller, the great pitcher of that era, always said he developed his back muscles carrying buckets of water from the Raccoon River on the family farm in Van Meter, Iowa. He turned rural life into an asset, which it was, for him, but the three great sluggers of midcentury were more urban than Feller. DiMaggio was from San Francisco, Williams from San Diego, and Musial from a steel town near Pittsburgh; Stanley had never been hunting until Red Schoendienst took him.

Whatever it means, the three sluggers were also “ethnic” in the American way, meaning they had fairly recent roots in other countries. Did this give them a drive to excel, to fit in? A lot of successful Americans have recent ties to some other place.

Giuseppe DiMaggio came to the States in 1898 and four years later sent for his wife, the former Rosalie Mercurio, and their daughter, Nellie, who had been born shortly after Giuseppe departed. The family settled first in Martinez, California, and later worked at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, with eight more children born in California, Joe arriving in 1914.
The family spoke a Sicilian dialect around the house.