Good day everyone!
On
the blog today, we add the greatest overlooked player in the history of
the game, Stan "The Man" Musial to my ongoing "Minor League Days:
Legends Edition" set:
We
see Musial here as a 20-year-old in 1941 when he put in 54 games with
the Rochester Red Wings, his only time with the team before moving up to
the Majors, where he'd dominate over the next 22 seasons, becoming one
of the greatest players ever to take the field.
In
his time with the Red Wings, Musial did what he would do at any level
of pro ball, HIT, as evidenced by his .326 batting average, along with
43 runs, 10 doubles, four triples and three homers to go with 21 runs
batted in.
By the end of the year he was in St. Louis, hitting a blistering .426 over 12 games, giving everyone an idea of what to expect.
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.
