Stan Musial (43 page)

“I wasn’t that good in school, but when I worked for Westinghouse, I got the opportunity to work different machines,” Ed said, proud of having become a good operator.

Stan had a sanguine understanding of what it took to be a major leaguer, the same respect that led him to welcome rookies to the big time. He would sometimes say, apparently casually, that he had played three games a day back in Donora, but Ed had played fewer. Was he saying he had wanted it more?

The nephew said there was no jealousy between his father and uncle. “There was nothing like, ‘You made it, I didn’t make it, I don’t like you.’ ” If there was any jealousy in his father, Edward added, “he never let on.”

The younger brother seemed aware of all the time that had passed, all the changes in their lives. “When we were younger, we were close,” Ed once said, but after the war, he added, “We separated.”

Ed did work with Stan and Dick in a short-lived baseball equipment business, but as he said in 1990, “
I went the other way, because I says, ‘You have your following, and I have my following, what little I have. And that’s
it, that’s the way we worked it, but we always knew that if we needed help, where I can get it.” Ed acknowledged they had moved apart over the years, but added, “Lately now it’s real good.”

A heavy smoker, Edward J. Musial developed lung cancer and died on December 10, 2003, at the age of eighty-one. Stan, two years older, put himself on a small regional flight and made it to the funeral.

Ed’s son, Edward, a retired steelworker, spoke well of his uncle and said he was proud to have the same last name.

“Certainly—all the time,” he said. “He’s one of the greatest baseball players of all time, right up there with Ruth and DiMaggio.”

From a few trips to St. Louis, Edward understood how much the people loved his uncle. “Can’t say enough good things about him. When he came to town, every kid in town wanted his glove signed. He’d sign every glove I could carry.”

From living in the Mon Valley all his life, Edward certainly heard the complaints that Stan did not come back often enough, did not do enough for the valley.

“People expect a lot,” the nephew said. “Same thing with Joe Montana. These people moved on. I don’t know how much you are supposed to give. Are you supposed to build roads? Libraries?

“He wasn’t making that much money in those years, not the millions they do today. He made more as a businessman. If you look at it, baseball was an avenue for him. He did very well. They liked him. He was an ordinary kind of guy, a nice house but I wouldn’t say a mansion.

“I know a lot of people say, ‘They don’t give back.’ But this isn’t your home. You don’t live here. It’s your hometown, but my uncle has lived in St. Louis for almost seventy years.”

Stan remained loyal to old friends like Dr. William Rongaus, one of the heroes of the 1948 smog, who often bragged: “I delivered Stan Musial, and I delivered Ken Griffey Sr.”

When Donora named ball fields for both players, Griffey Senior could not be there for the dedication because he was managing a minor-league team, but Musial sat in a small tent in the heat for three hours, signing autographs. Other times when Musial came back for reunions, he would often pay for the entertainment.

Still, while visiting Donora in 2009, I heard somebody tell me Musial
had set too steep a price for memorabilia for a display case at his old high school. Nobody could verify it, but somebody told it to me as gospel.

“
Maybe it is characteristic of athletes from western Pennsylvania,” said Charles Stacey, the retired superintendent of schools, but some people were always looking to see “if you got too big for your britches.”

Musial’s old school, Donora High, and Joe Montana’s old school, Monongahela High, had been folded into Ringgold High School, leaving both great athletes more or less without an alma mater. People told me that residents of Monongahela were annoyed when Montana chose to watch his son play in a high school game in California rather than come back for a sporting function. Hometowns can be rough.

IN MARCH
2009, I got a guided tour of Donora from Bimbo Cecconi, the great Pitt tailback. He took me up to the old high school, where Musial had hit his epic grand slam into the trees, and he showed me the gym, where he used to watch Musial work out during the baseball off-season.

We drove past all the ethnic clubs that were still open for a beer and a shot. Bimbo showed me where some of the old athletes had lived, and then we visited the library, whose staff was extremely helpful. A few older female patrons of the library fluttered around Cecconi, still handsome at eighty. He still lived near Pittsburgh, which apparently did not qualify as moving “away.”

Somebody mentioned recent shootings involving youths from Donora and Monessen, just across the river. One version was that the shootings were over girls, but another version was that the shootings were over drugs.

Charles Stacey, now the head of the historical society, showed us the new headquarters in a former Chinese restaurant. Then the three of us took a walk down McKean, the main drag, virtually silent at midday, like a scene out of
High Noon
. One young man, waiting in a doorway, greeted Stacey, who recognized him as a former student. My reporter instincts told me the young man was a lookout.

As Stacey walked along, he suddenly had a memory of Lukasz Musial shortly after the Cardinals beat the Yankees in the 1942 World Series: “He
was walking down the street and he had a baseball in his hand and he was tossing it up in the air and catching it and singing.”

We stopped in front of Costas Restaurant, where Donorans used to go for lunch or to celebrate a sports victory. It was shuttered now.

“It seemed bigger,” Cecconi said, peering in.

The two men recalled a state basketball tournament in Philadelphia in the mid-forties, when Donora got screwed by the big-city timekeeper.

“
I passed to Pope and he missed and that was it,” Cecconi said, reverently mentioning his late friend Arnold Galiffa, who went on to play quarterback for Army.

Just about everything was shuttered on McKean. Most commerce now took place in a graceless mall on what looked like a reclaimed strip mine on the hill across the river. I did not see where anybody could buy a sandwich in Stan Musial’s hometown.

“It’s bad because I remember the good times,” Cecconi said. “We’d walk from the top of the hill, walk down Main Street, we walked everywhere, we knew everybody, it was so personal. So many churches. So many small groups. So many people.”

Cecconi and Stacey heard some people say that Musial did not support his hometown. They shook their heads mournfully, recalling him sitting under an awning on a hot day, shaking hands, signing autographs, chatting with people. He cared about his town, they said. And they paid him the highest compliment they could give to a man: he took care of his mother.

“I
NEED
to stop at a bank,” Musial told Tom Ashley.

Ashley had been a key executive in the early days of Ted Turner’s network, and later he made a documentary about his father-in-law—a labor of love, really.

This was sometime in the eighties, when Ashley was accompanying Musial to a reunion of the Cardinals, ranging back to the old days, the forties. Stanley popped into a bank and came out pocketing a thick roll of hundreds.

At the reunion, Stan hoisted a glass, played the harmonica, went into his crouch. Wouldn’t be Stanley without the crouch. He also huddled with this old teammate or that old teammate—names from old bubble-gum cards, names from World Series box scores. Sometimes they would hug, sometimes they would shake hands.

Stanley did not go into detail, but Ashley guessed that on this one evening Musial had given, only to those who needed it, around $10,000.

A
S A
player, Musial got to meet public figures on his circuit around the league, but in retirement he expanded his circle to a philanthropist, a Polish labor leader, and, if one is really dropping titles, the pope.

This new path in Musial’s life began in 1960 when he campaigned for John F. Kennedy along with James A. Michener. The writer and the slugger became the odd couple on their sojourn through Middle America.

Whatever the chemistry, Michener and Musial liked each other’s company and remained in touch after those autumn days on the road. The question immediately comes up: what did they have in common?

From Musial’s perspective, Michener was responsible for one of the most popular musicals in American history—
South Pacific
, which opened on Broadway in 1949 and was the hottest ticket when Stan and Red would take in the occasional show.

Michener had used his navy experience to write
Tales of the South Pacific
, a series of short stories that won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize and was turned by Joshua Logan into a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, which still touches hearts today.

South Pacific
was revived in 2008 at New York’s Lincoln Center, reminding people of the America that helped end World War II—a country of strong ideals that was beginning to encounter its racial prejudices.

Without Michener, young and alive and observant in the middle of a war, there would have been no French planter singing “Some Enchanted Evening,” no nurse from Little Rock singing “I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy,” no lieutenant singing “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught,” a biting
condemnation of intolerance. The revival made some old-timers (me, for one) weep in honor of the country of the late forties. Michener touched a nerve, caught a time and place.

Just the aura of this great postwar musical might have been enough to make Musial—who had played ball at Pearl Harbor during the war and later in postwar Japan—glad he met Michener.

It is also possible that the values Michener could express were the same ones that ran within Musial, whether or not he could articulate them. They found each other; they formed a sweet friendship.

Musial, who said he read nonfiction, particularly histories and biographies, once said, “Jim knew I read his books, but we never talked about the books. He was a great sports fan. And he was a nice, low-key guy.”

Plus, celebrities often tend to relate to one another as kindred souls who understand public scrutiny and expectation, who have come through under pressure. Each was in awe of what the other did; both understood discipline and hard work; both were shy, in their own ways.

“
They liked being out somewhere and somebody would recognize one of them but not the other,” said Tom Ashley. “Michener was not a lot of laughs. He got a kick out of Stan.”

Both came from rather bleak childhoods. Michener was born in New York City in 1907 and was raised around Doylestown, Pennsylvania, by a widow, Mabel Michener, who sometimes had to farm him out to an orphanage when she ran low on money and space. He grew up understanding he would have to make his own way in the world, and was constantly on the move, writing about other people’s lives, other people’s homes.

“
As a boy I had nothing,” Michener said before his eighty-ninth birthday. “No toys. No baseball gloves. No wagon. No skates. Nothing. But I did have people who loved me and looked after my education.”

Musial appeared to be a more gregarious soul than Michener. As it is with writers, Michener recognized some quality in the other person that he admired, maybe even needed to tap into, to get his work done.

It took an army or a village to help Michener, who always spent a few years researching his next subject, usually rooted in geography and history. Michener’s quartermaster was his wife, Mari, but he also depended on friends like Herman Silverman, a builder of pools and a real estate developer in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. (In his bachelor days, Michener had
scored a lot of points with Silverman by showing up as a weekend guest with his girlfriend of the time, Janis Paige, the actress.)

Silverman was glad to serve as a Sancho Panza who could read maps, settle bills, and jolly tour guides and desk clerks; his wife, Ann, tended to think Michener was a bit on the rude side.

Musial was always a welcome addition to the party—the seemingly secure athlete who could charm people. Through Michener, Musial met John Wayne for an impromptu lunch that would forever make Musial’s life easier. While the three of them were chatting, fans kept coming over to seek autographs.

“
Jim and I were signing napkins and pieces of paper,” Musial recalled. “John Wayne was handing out these picture cards that he’d already signed. I went home and said, ‘That’s a good idea. People could lose a napkin.’ But you know what happened? I forgot to get the Duke’s autograph.”

Soon Musial was carrying signed cards for fans, enabling him to smile and make small talk rather than sign his name.

The slugger and the author had politics in common. Michener once noted that Musial was the only superstar he knew who was a Democrat. Musial apparently remained a Democrat despite his exposure to LBJ, although some people who knew him said he was more conservative than many liberal Democrats. Musial not only supported George McGovern for president in 1972 but still admitted it four years after the Nixon landslide.

“
I’m a Democrat,” he told a friend in 1976. “Tom Eagleton, the Senator, says he remembers sitting in my lap when he was a kid visiting our spring-training camp years ago.”

Soon Michener and Musial had something else in common: Lukasz Musial’s homeland, Poland.

One of Michener’s friends was Edward Piszek, a self-made millionaire, son of Polish immigrants who ran a grocery store in Philadelphia. While operating a bar as a young man, Piszek cooked too many crabcakes and decided to freeze the leftovers. The process worked so well that he and a partner, John Paul, began a company called Mrs. Paul’s Kitchens, whose major product was fish sticks.

Piszek eventually bought out his partner, and also graduated from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania after attending night classes. He began using his money to benefit his ancestral
homeland, sending generator-powered X-ray units to help eradicate tuberculosis, organizing a group called Project Pole to abolish Polish jokes.