<p>Stan Musial was one of my childhood heroes. One of my favorite stories he told is that he had a serious shoulder injury going into the World Series (unfortunately, he only played in one outside of WWII). So on the first ball hit to him he threw as hard as he could to second and acted like it didn’t hurt. He said no one ran on him after that though he could barely move his arm.</p>
<p>I love to look at his stats. Or the stats of any old great player. The raw numbers are ridiculous: 3630 hits, 475 HRs, .331 BA, .417 OBP, .976 OPS and only struck out about 35 times a year. And look at the decline as he got older: a fairly steady drop after age 36 to age 42. That’s the pattern you should see without drugs. It took Ted Williams to age 40 to show his age but what can you say about a guy whose career OBP was .482 with a career OPS of 1.116. Other than Barry Bonds, no one gets to .482 OBP in a season.</p>
<p>Stan Musial was fantastic. His numbers were amazing. I have never read any bad things about him either. Sad to see he is gone. One of the real all time greats.</p>
<p>Musial was another son of a coalminer who worked hard to achieve success in baseball. His Polish father had him take up gymnastics at an early age to improve his athleticism. Stan was originally signed as a pitcher. He was past his prime when I watched him on TV, but if you look at his stats you see how many times he led his league in several categories. I read one of his biographies several years ago and the man was remarkable.</p>
<p>In the top 10 all-time on any informed list of baseball greats, amazing stats. But also a class act his whole life and particularly during the integration of baseball which is something I’m always interested in hearing, how various players of the time reacted to integration.</p>