http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/dan-caesar/article_4ae4c1a5-24d2-5294-9be3-2a250e531c76.html
Ultimate irony about Stan The Man
MEDIA VIEWS > Dan Caesar
dcaesar@post-dispatch.com, 314-340-8175 | Posted: Friday, June 17, 2011 12:00 pm |
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Former St. Louis Cardinals great Baseball Hall of Famer Stan Musial smiles as he pretends to swing a bat for a cheering crowd before the start of the opening day baseball game between the San Diego Padres and Cardinals, Thursday, March 31, 2011, in St. Louis. Behind is Musial's grandson, Ryan Schwartz. (AP Photo/Tom Gannam)
Acclaimed PBS interviewer Charlie Rose devoted a considerable amount of his June 13 show to discussing how Cardinals icon Stan Musial has been overlooked nationally for all his accomplishments. And in a strange twist, the show was overlooked in St. Louis - the local PBS affilliate, KETC (Channel 9), pre-empted it for fund-raising programming, relegating it to the wee hours of the next day.
But the station will broadcast it at more convenient times Monday - 1:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. - and it's worth the wait for Musial fans. The panel for the lively segment, which takes up more than 20 minutes of the hour-long program, is made up of NBC and MLB Network broadcaster and longtime St. Louisan Bob Costas, Fox baseball analyst and former Cardinal Tim McCarver plus the New York Times' George Vecsey, who wrote a recently-released book about Musial.
"He is now the most underrated - outside St. Louis - great player in the game's history,'' Costas says.
McCarver says had Musial been a Yankee he would have been better than legendary New York star Joe DiMaggio because the dimensions at Yankee Stadium favored Musial's game. McCarver also says Musial has been remarkably unassuming.
"He was so comfortable within himself that he made everybody around him fell comfortable,'' McCarver says. "And that is a very unusual trait for a superstar.''
Musial wasn't included on ESPN's rundown of the top athletes of the last century, wasn't voted by the fans as one of the greatest players of the game's first 100 years. And Costas says the reason Musial has been overlooked nationally is because there is no "specific thing to hang your hat on. Even though ‘Stan the Man' is a great nickname, even though the coiled stance was distinctive, there's just not one moment - there aren't the controversies. There aren't the specific achievements: All-time home run king, last man to hit .400, 56-game hitting streak. He just kind of slipped through the cracks.''
McCarver points out the Musial also wasn't in the World Series in the last 18 years of his playing career.
Costas tells an anecdote about delivering the eulogy at Mickey Mantle's funeral and scanning the sanctuary and seeing Musial sitting alone.
"There were some people missing you might have expected to have been there'' Costas says. "In a split second you realize what has happened here. A man who no one would have marked absent - he wasn't linked to (Mantle), he wasn't a teammate, he played in the National League, never faced him except in an All-Star Game or a spring training game but he had decided that as a prominent member of the baseball fraternity and as somebody who Mickey cared about, that it was the right thing to do, to get out of bed that morning in St. Louis, get on a plane, fly to Dallas, make his presence known, express his respect and condolences - by himself - then go back to the airport and fly home.
"And sometimes you're just struck by an act of simple decency and kindness. Stan Musial had more than 3,000 lifetime hits. He's got about 3 million simple acts of decency and kindness.''
And Costas sums things up.
"When the time comes, and we all hope its a long way off ... if you find yourself in St. Louis it'll be like a head of state is gone. It'll be the entire St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It will be wall-to-wall on KMOX and on every television station. And every single person, including hundreds of thousands much too young to have ever seen him play, will say Stan Musial had been part of their life.''