Stan Musial and His Lumber

Stan Musial poses with his bats at the Polo Grounds on April 8, 1963, before the opening of the baseball season against the New York Mets. Musial was one of baseball’s greatest hitters and a revered figure in the storied history of the St. Louis Cardinals — the player they called Stan the Man.

His obituary in The New York Times in 2013 said, “Musial was renowned for his concentration at the plate, and for his patience: he struck out only 696 times in 10,972 at-bats in his 22 major league seasons, all as a Cardinal. A gentlemanly and sunny figure – he loved to play “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” on his harmonica – he was never ejected from a game. When admirers approached him, he chatted them up with his familiar ‘whattayasay, whattayasay.'”