Monday, February 12, 2024

MINOR LEAGUE DAYS: LEGENDS EDITION: STAN MUSIAL

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.

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