On the blog today, we have my "missing" 1950 Stan Musial Drake's card, from my custom set released a couple of years ago in special packaging:
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One
of my favorite oddball sets of the vintage era, Drake's did in fact
leave out some of the biggest names of the sport, including "Stan the
Man".
As for the great Musial, his MLB numbers are just absurd: seven batting
titles, two R.B.I. titles, five triples titles and eight doubles titles,
with career numbers of 475 home runs, 1951 runs batted in and a .331
career average. Throw in his 725 doubles, 177
triples and 3630 hits along with 1949 runs scored and the numbers are
staggering.
And don't forget that Musial also lost a year to military duty,
easily putting him over 500 homers, close to 3900 hits and around 2100
runs batted in if he played in 1945.
Along with the great Frank Robinson I always felt Stan Musial was often overlooked in the decades since his playing days ended.
When talk of "Greatest Living Player" came up it was always
Williams, DiMaggio, Mays or even Aaron that would come up. But Stan
Musial would always kind of be that after-thought.
Criminal. Three Most Valuable Player Awards, FOUR second-place finishes, including
three in a row between 1949-1951, and twenty consecutive all-star
appearances, Musial definitely is a member of that rarified stratosphere
of baseball royalty along with the likes of Ruth, Cobb, Mays and
Wagner, among others.