STAN MUSIAL'S TEN GREATEST DAYS

Stan Musial photographed for SPORT Magazine 1952
"Spring Ritual" -- limited edition of 100

STAN MUSIAL'S TEN GREATEST DAYS
by Joe Reichler

Published in the November 1954 issue of SPORT Magazine and excerpted for this blog post

STAN MUSIAL dug in at the plate. Larry Jansen pumped on the mound and threw a change‑up, high and inside. Musial swung and raised a pop fly to the first‑baseman. The crowd of 26,662 at Busch Sta­dium stood up and cheered. The ovation lasted for sev­eral minutes and Musial, after returning to the dugout, had to emerge and tip his cap in acknowledgment.

Weeks later Musial was talking with a group of baseball writers when one of them mentioned the incident. “That’s the first time in all my years of cover­ing baseball that I heard a player cheered for popping up,” he said.

“Come to think of it,” Musial said, “it never hap­pened to me before.” He gave the high‑pitched laugh which he often uses to cover embarrassment.

The reporter was kidding. And so was Musial. They both knew the reason for the unusual ovation. It came after Stan’s last time at bat in a doubleheader in which he had made baseball history by hitting five home runs. The big crowd had sat through six and a half hours of baseball, despite interruptions by rain and the appear­ance of dark storm clouds that had made it necessary to turn on the lights as early as the ninth inning of the first game. Most of the fans didn’t get home until long after suppertime but few were willing to leave the park until Stan had batted for the last time.

It was a rewarding day for the noisy Cardinal fans. They saw Musial go to bat ten times. Twice he walked, once he singled and twice he was retired. Five times he hit home runs into the stands or out of the park completely. No ballplayer had ever done it before in the major leagues.

Talking about the feat later, a writer said to Stan, “That was a big day for you but you’ve had others. Which of them have given you your biggest thrills?”

“I guess I’ve had more than one guy’s share,” he said. “Probably that five‑homer day gave me my big­gest kick. Until then, I had always favored the game back in September, 1948, when I tied Cobb’s record of getting five hits in a game for the fourth time in a single season.”

“Okay,” the sportswriter said, “I’ll really put you on the spot. Let’s pick your ten greatest days in baseball—the ten games or doubleheaders that have given you your greatest thrills. Just the top ten.”

“It’s hard for me to single out more than a few games and pick them as the best ones,” Stan replied.

“But I’ll try. You know, some players can remember exactly what they hit in a certain game. But I’m not too good at that. I just enjoy playing ball. Sure, I like my hits as well as the next guy, and get a pleasure out of my records, but in a ball game I’m interested in win­ning the game. That’s the big thing.”

With some prodding by the interviewer and some help from the record books, Stan finally settled on the following as his ten greatest:

(1) The record five‑homer day against the Giants on May 2, 1954.

(2) The day he tied Cobb’s record with five hits against the Braves. That was September 22, 1948.

(3, 4) The next two were successive games against the Dodgers, May 19 and May 20, 1948. In the first Stan hit a triple, double, three singles, drew a base on balls and scored five runs. All those hits came with two strikes on him. The next day, he hit a homer, two doubles and a single. Nine for 11 against the unfor­tunate Dodger pitchers!

(5) A five‑for‑five day against the Braves in which he won the game with his fifth hit in the ninth. The date was September 19, 1946, and Red Sox manager Joe Cronin and Ted Williams were in the stands, scouting the Cards for the World Series.

(6) A game on September 17, 1948, against the Dodg­ers when he pulled two spectacular outfield catches, including a tumbling grab for the final out in the eighth inning with the tying run on the bases. The Cards won, 4‑2.

(7) Beating the Braves with his fifth hit of the game in the ninth on June 22, 1948. It was his third five‑hit game of the season.

( 8 ) A double­header on September 25, 1947, against the Pirates dur­ing which he got seven hits. The performance was a fitting climax to a tremendous late‑season batting surge by Musial, which had enabled him to lift his average from .140 in mid‑May to .312 at the end of the season.

( 9 ) A July 14, 1946, doubleheader against the Dodgers in which he scored the winning runs in the first game and both runs, on a triple and 12th‑inning homer, in the second. The Cards won, 5‑3, 2‑1.

(10) July 21, 1943, his first five‑hit day. He got one hit against each of five Giant pitchers. The Cards won, 14‑6.

Nate Robinson Can Thank Dr. J

The Doctor Lays One In Softly (photo courtesy SPORT Magazine Photography Collection)

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Julius Irving is the first one to bring the gliding and flying excitement of the dunk to professional basketball, in the ABA in the early 1970's. He led the way for creating the event today known as the NBA Slam Dunk Contest.

Biggest NBA Rivalry Renewed Tonight!

"Rivals" SPORT Magazine Photograph

NBA's most storied rivalry by far is renewed tonight of Boston vs. Los Angeles; not by Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain as in the 1968-69 season pictured above, but by their successors led by The Big Three of Boston and Kobe and Pau of the Lakers.

The 1969 NBA Finals were taken by the Celtics as were the 2008 NBA Finals. The Lakers are hoping to change that this year, and lead the season series 1-0 as they head into tonight's challenge.

A Brief History of SPORT Magazine

At its launch in 1946, SPORT magazine was America's first significant general interest sports magazine. By the time of its closing 54 years later, SPORT was an American institution.

Fondly remembered today as pure Americana, SPORT was the brainchild of a small New York publisher, MacFadden Publications Inc, and became a triumph from the day its first issue hit the street with a color image of Joe DiMaggio and his son Joe, Jr. on the cover. That inaugural edition included eight full color plates – unheard of at the time – and almost immediately SPORT rose to over a million in circulation and became half bible, half guru to a generation of men coming of age in post-war America.

MacFadden seized an unappreciated subject like sports and took it mainstream. The formula was simple: combine terrific editorial features written by the greatest writers of the time with generous presentations of photography, particularly full-page Rockwell-like color imagery. It was born as a novel idea and grew into a cultural icon.

In its early years, SPORT had the market for magazine-style sports journalism virtually to itself and, under founding editor Ernest Heyn, pioneered a brand of behind-the-scenes glimpses of the heroes of the day not previously attempted. The emphasis was not on the games or the teams, but on the elements of human drama that lay beneath. SPORT was an icon in the league of Life and Look and the Saturday Evening Post.

Insightful essays as long as 5,000 words focused on the personalities and human drama of sport. Each month SPORT was filled with evocative writing from its own stable of staff writers, plus submissions from the likes of Grantland Rice, Jimmy Breslin, David Halberstam, William F. Buckley and Dick Schaap.

Groundbreaking Use of Color Photography

But it was SPORT's groundbreaking use of color photography, particularly during its first 30 years, which captivated a generation of sports fans, many of whom wallpapered their bedrooms with the exquisite full-page photos that were the magazine's signature item. SPORT used many of the nation's top shooters of the post-war era, combining work from staffers such as Martin Blumenthal, George Heyer and Kevin Fitzgerald with that of incomparable freelancers such as Ozzie Sweet, Hy Peskin and Neil Leifer.

If imitation is indeed the greatest form of flattery, then SPORT received the ultimate compliment with the birth of Sports Illustrated in 1954. Time Inc. had tried to purchase the name SPORT, but its final offer of $200,000 was $50,000 less than McFadden was willing to accept. Undaunted, Time launched Sports Illustrated, borrowing liberally from its rival.

Representative of SPORT's superiority, in the hearts and minds of the reading public, but also of the men who ran the leagues and teams across North America, was the magazine's success in establishing the SPORT Award in 1955 for the most valuable player in the World Series. The concept was expanded over the years until a SPORT magazine award was presented to the outstanding post-season performer in all four major team sports, as sanctioned by the leagues.

But by the early 1970s, MacFadden, lacking Time's deep pockets, was fading and thus ensued a dizzying succession of ownership changes for the magazine. There was also a corresponding zig-zag in editorial direction, and gradually SPORT lost its way, its distinctive voice and, eventually, its presence. In August 2000, after appearing every month for 54 years under 10 different owners, SPORT magazine ceased publication.

SPORT Magazine Remembered...

Its passing was mourned in many quarters. As The Wall Street Journal's Allen Barra, writing in Salon.com, put it: “Though it didn't make any headlines, the news of the death of SPORT magazine ... must have put a lump in the throat of those old enough to remember the greatest of all American sports magazines ... Sports Illustrated was great, but SI, in an era when you couldn't see all the highlights every night, was read for news; SPORT was for reflection.”

Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe described SPORT as “an irreplaceable part of the American sports experience.”

And, in a rare departure for the competitive magazine industry, SI itself paid tribute to SPORT on its own pages with a heartfelt piece that began, "They closed the barbershop last week, the one in town, the first place – not counting school or a friend's house – where your mother would drop you off and leave you ..."

Such was the comfort afforded by SPORT magazine.

Not only did SPORT focus on the superstars of the post-war era, but it paid homage to the great athletes of the first half of the 20th Century. A regular feature called The SPORT Hall of Fame profiled in lengthy detail the lives and careers of 70 superstar athletes, from baseball superstars Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig and Walter Johnson to Jack Dempsey, Ben Hogan, Red Grange, George Mikan, Jim Thorpe, Jesse Owens, Johnny Longden and Joe Louis, to name a few.

SPORT published 647 issues comprising approximately 10,000 articles and 40 million words between September 1946 and August 2000. The SPORT photo library holds more than 200,000 images. Together, those words and pictures represent one of the world's most significant historicalrecords of 20th century sports, and today form the basis of The SPORT Magazine

Archive.

Welcome to the SPORT Magazine Photography Collection

"Clubhouse Confidential--New York Yankees-1947"

Welcome to the SPORT Magazine Photography Collection blog! Beginning today we hope to add new posts about the legendary SPORT Magazine (1946-2000); its world-renowned collection of the best in sports photography, reporting and in-depth features along with regular posts from sports fans and journalists from around the globe. Please feel free to comment and subscribe to our regular posts.

Here's a little bit more info about the photograph "Clubhouse Confidential": It was photographed exclusively for SPORT Magazine for a spread on "A Day at the Ballpark" in the fall of 1947 depicting a group of Yankees, including Ralph Houk and Allie Reynolds, listening to manager Bucky Harris give a pre-game pep talk. Going around the table, starting with Harris are Yogi Berra (behind Harris), unknown, Joe Collins (seated, no shirt), Aaron Robinson (behind Collins), unknown (in shadow), Don Johnson, unknown (seated, no shirt), Ally Reynolds (#22.)