THERE WAS still a chance to get it right.
The 2009 All-Star Game was coming to the third Busch Stadium, and Musial’s fans were hoping for a Stanleyfest to match the emotional reception for Ted Williams in Boston ten years earlier.
By now, baseball had long since merged with show biz. The fans were connoisseurs of reality shows and makers of home videos, fancying themselves as potential Spielbergs. They remembered how Henry Aaron and Junior from Donora had physically and psychologically lifted the old pilot, giving him one more glory day in Fenway.
The Musial support system began to envision the worldwide television audience paying homage to Musial. They could imagine him responding to the crowd, feeling the love from all over the world, and willing himself back into The Stance, one more time. Or more likely, a few more times.
The Cardinal organization was always so nice to Musial, acknowledging him as the greatest Cardinal of all, introducing him on special occasions, giving him a motorized ride around the ballpark, the way Gussie Busch used to tour the premises behind his Clydesdales. Time was running out.
ON OPENING day of 2009, Musial was driven onto the field for another ovation. Albert Pujols, sitting next to Musial on a golf cart, adjusted his red Cardinals jacket, while Musial’s left hand was braced on Pujols, the way an old man will lean on a younger man, for strength. The body language was clear: Musial knew he was in the company of an equal, who had the strength and stature Stan had once enjoyed.
The next day there was a beautiful color photo in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of Pujols caring for Musial, deferring to him, not because time was on his side but because grace was in his soul.
Pujols was already a civic treasure—born in the Dominican Republic, moved to Kansas City in his teens, thoughtful and talented. With every Most Valuable Player Award, with every home run, with every charitable deed and gracious gesture, he became acknowledged as the greatest Cardinal hitter since Musial.
A few weeks after opening day in 2009, I asked Pujols about the moment captured in the photo. Pujols is a proud man, a solid citizen, and he does not chat idly with reporters, particularly strangers. He seemed a trifle mystified by my question, as if saying, Look, this is what anybody would do—treat an older man, particularly Stan Musial, with love and respect.
“It was cold,” Pujols said. “His jacket wasn’t buttoned. I was afraid he would be cold out there.”
Musial and Pujols seemed almost mystically linked. Totally by accident, Musial happened to be in Denver at an autograph show when Pujols made his major-league debut on opening day in 2001 and thereby witnessed Pujols’s first hit.
Their mutual admiration cut through the mists of time. Whenever they were in the same place, Musial would perk up, as if somebody had injected him with youth serum.
Rick Hummel, the longtime baseball sage of St. Louis, witnessed this in July 2009 when Musial and Pujols were brought together for a photo shoot to prepare for the All-Star Game. At first they were polite, doing their job and looking at the camera, but to Hummel’s delight they soon began talking baseball: their stances, their bat sizes, their playing weights (175 to 240, to mutual amazement).
Sample:
PUJOLS: Do you have anything to help me out?
MUSIAL: Know the strike zone.
PUJOLS: What if you have a bad umpire?
MUSIAL: If they called a bad strike on me, I would give him a mean look.
Pujols left that photo shoot about six feet off the ground. Hit two homers that night. After that, Pujols put out the word around town. People had begun calling him “El Hombre,” but Pujols politely rejected that nickname. Never has a young superstar been so gracious to an old superstar. There is only one Man in this town, he said.
ALL OF St. Louis began anticipating the 2009 All-Star Game, and the Cardinal front office began planning for an extravaganza, a night of nights.
Except for one detail beyond their control. Major League Baseball had invited the new American president, Barack Obama, to the game. It would be his first major baseball function since the inauguration in January. There was no political or social statement in the president’s invitation; given baseball’s vestigial status as national pastime, there is a standing invitation to any president to any baseball event.
The new president accepted. And nothing was ever the same. Whatever videos had been planned to depict the glory of Musial’s career were now downsized. A parade around the warning track? An honor guard of old teammates encircling him? His own harmonica rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”? Albert Pujols helping him take one more swing?
Whatever was in the hearts and minds of St. Louis impresarios, official and unofficial, was now obliterated by the hard reality of the White House and the Secret Service and the need for Major League Baseball to make the president the center of attention.
Nearly half a century earlier, Musial had been charmed by a charismatic young candidate named John F. Kennedy. Now he was overshadowed by protocol, by fate, by time, by another magnetic young president.
“The whole dynamic changed,” said Dick Zitzmann, Musial’s business associate.
The Musial family could see it happening. There was nothing to do but show up.
“Mom and I were worried because we had to go so early because of the security,” said Gerry Ashley, who understood that even Hall of Fame ballplayers must go into lockdown when a president is expected. Doors and corridors and rooms that are normally available are suddenly unavailable.
The Musials were legitimately concerned that the weary man might get upset and ask to go home, but something wonderful happened: in the company of fellow Hall of Famers—Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Bruce Sutter, Ozzie Smith, and, of course, Red—a version of the old Stanley emerged. He passed the time chatting with them, being one of the boys, until it was time to go on the field.
Musial was the last player to be introduced. Wearing a red jacket, riding in from center field in a cart, his grandson Brian Schwarze at his side, he carried the ceremonial first ball, as cameras flashed and people cheered.
Then President Obama was introduced. The athletic basketball player bounced up the dugout steps, wearing blue jeans and a Chicago White Sox jacket, striding over to Musial’s cart, taking the ball from Musial. The president then made the ceremonial first pitch to Pujols, bouncing the ball in the dirt.
The moment passed quickly—nothing like the swarm of love for Williams in 1999—and the Musials reconvened in a suite high above the field.
To their delight, the president arrived later, chatting with everybody. Stan was pretty low-key, but Lil, ever the social director, took charge.
“My mom, knowing that Obama likes basketball, told him, ‘Stan was offered a scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh but he turned it down to play baseball,’ ” Gerry Ashley reported.
With his winning smile, Obama told Lil: “I guess he made the right decision.”
Already an Obama fan, Gerry was totally charmed.
“Obama’s so cute,” she said.
Not everybody was charmed. Part of the annoyance might have been political, but most of it stemmed from the civic hero’s rule having been minimized once again.
“For the next three days, all of St. Louis was on the talk radio,” Gerry said. “They kept saying that Major League Baseball had promised the same thing it did for Ted Williams.”
Reflecting the mood of her hometown, Gerry concluded: “Same old, same old.”
FEELING THE rush of time, in 2010 the Cardinals picked up on a suggestion five years earlier by the Post-Dispatch columnist Bernie Miklasz that Musial deserved the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which had been given to other prominent athletes including, yes, DiMaggio and Williams.
William O. DeWitt Jr., the owner of the club, approved a sophisticated electronic campaign called “Stand for Stan.” DeWitt formally nominated Musial for the medal, and fans seconded the motion through the Cardinal website. Often they were photographed in ballparks or more exotic settings with a flat cartoon likeness of Musial, adapted from the Flat Stanley series, used in literary programs.
“The day we started, the team was in San Diego, and there were fans in the stands with Flat Stanley posters,” said Ron Watermon, the Cardinal official who led the project. The campaign was backed up by two Missouri senators and one Illinois senator and the White House staff presented a list to President Obama, including the aging gentleman the president had met at the 2009 All-Star Game.
On November 17, 2010, the White House announced that Musial was to receive the medal, along with Bill Russell, the great center of the Boston Celtics, and former President George H. W. Bush and other prominent Americans as well as German chancellor Angela Merkel. DeWitt and everybody else who congratulated Musial reported that he felt honored and humbled by the news.
Stan and Lil were flown to Washington for the ceremony on February 15, 2011, on a plane provided by Bill DeWitt. All four children were there, Dick and Gerry, Janet and Jeanne, bubbling to be with their parents on this day. In the East Room of the White House, wearing his Cardinal red jacket, Musial sat quietly as President Obama raved about his playing career and then recalled how Musial once requested a cut in pay when he had a bad year.
“You can imagine that happening today,” the president said drily.
Then Obama reminded the guests that there was so much more to this man: “Stan remains, to this day, an icon, untarnished; a beloved pillar of the community; a gentleman you’d want your kids to emulate.”
In the presence of two presidents, poets and cellists, philanthropists and activists, Musial was being honored as a good citizen, a role model, the American success story. Somehow, through all the hairstyles and music styles, the wars and the booms and the recessions, he had played by the rules, had done things right, had met the ball squarely.
The medal just might help new fans discover Stan the Man. They may look at all the records he set, may see a grainy film of him taking off for second base, may see his lopsided smile, may even say, Wow, that Stan Musial, he was good.
The guests applauded Stan the Man as he faced them, a trace of a smile on his face. He knew they were applauding for him; he had heard this sound before. And then he put his hands together and he applauded the applause. It was his day. People were rediscovering the old master.