The wife bought a book for the little ones BD last week...101 reasons to love the Cardinals....my number is actually higher than that, but as I was looking at it, one of Stan the Mans' stats really jumped out. In 3,630 career base hits, he had 1,815 at home, 1,815 on the road. Now that's well balanced.
Thanks, AJ. Stan the Man is one of my two boyhood idols (Ernie Banks the other). I did not know that fact.
Stan Musial was one of the greats of my boyhood as well, along with Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Reese, Carl Furillo, Johnny Podres, Jim Gilliam, Don Newcombe, Campy, Sandy Amoros, and a few others. :wink: :wink:
Sid, From the stories that I've heard from mom and dad, relatives and some of the SBoxers here, I have always maintained that I would have loved, to been a young adult from 1952-1965 in America. Especially Baseball during the '50's. Was there any better decade?
Certainly not for me because I lived it. It was a much, much simpler life for a kid than today. You've probably seen the internet "strolls down memory lane." I'm not one who yearns for the way it used to be, like so many older folks do. Yes, it's a more complicated world today than the one I grew up in. So what? My world was more complicated as a kid than that of my parents' childhoods....well....except for the Great Depression, of course. Back to the point. Baseball-wise, it was a great time to be growing up and following MLB. You know the players from that era.....many of the greatest who ever played the game. My whole life outside of school was baseball. Participation-wise, I didn't get interested in other sports until around the age of 12-13 (late 50s). Even then, baseball was, and is today, my first love as far as sports are concerned. The groundwork was laid between 1951 (Mays and Mantle's rookie seasons), when I bought my first baseball cards at the age of 7 and 1959, when my New Jersey State Champ Babe Ruth League team played in Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C..
Those were certainly good years AJ. For baseball and many other reasons. Stan the man was a special player and a lot of his batting average numbers were before the sac fly rule came in weren't they?
Bill, I learned something new today. I did not know that the sac fly rule did not always exist. I looked it up on Wikipedia, and this is what I found: Stan Musial played from 1941 through 1963, 23 years, so there was no infield fly rule for more than half of his career. It would be interesting to know how many times he was charged with a time at bat for a fly ball RBI.
For me the most exciting time was the 60's. It started with '61 and Maris chasing Ruth. In 1962 I'll always remember a chilly wet April afternoon when I went up to the Polo Grounds to see the new kids in town the NY Metropolitans. They and the Astros were the new babes in the league and let's face it, how many can say that they were there from the first pitch of a franchise. And then there was the Worlds Fair and the opening of Big Shea. They were playing in my boro, they were my home town guys. Everything was better but the team. And then the miracle of '69 to close out the decade. Winning their division. Playing in the first NLCS. Sweeping the Braves and beating the Orioles in 5. From worst to first. Wow!
I was at Stan Musial's third last game with my dad in Cincinnati's Crosley Field. He pinch hit late in the game and hit a line drive single right through the box. I may have actually seen his last hit. What a hitter!
Sid, I've read that Ted Williams' .406 in '41 would have been something like .417 had the sacrifice fly rule been in effect.
Wow! That's just one season. Imagine the impact on both Williams' and Musial's careers if the sac fly rule had existed through the forties and early fifties.