Stan the Man hasn't lost Musial magic

AMERICA AT LARGE:He came from a time when your father's hero could also be your own

STAN THE Man is 90 years of age and wheelchair-bound these days, but pretty much the minute he was wheeled into the East Room on Tuesday, in the company of 14 other Presidential Medal-winners, it became clear to all, including Barack Obama, just who was the most important person in the room.

Even as the White House staffers were positioning the other dignitaries, from German chancellor Angela Merkel to poet Maya Angelou and even one of Obama's predecessors, George HW Bush, Stan reached into the inside breast pocket of that Cardinal-red sport coat, fished out a harmonica and proceeded to play what has to have been the most soulfully upbeat rendition of Take Me Out to the Ball Gameperformed in the White House. Yo Yo Ma must have wanted to break out his cello and join in.

He may not have been the greatest to play the game, but he was arguably the greatest of his era, which spanned four decades. And perhaps even more importantly, I found myself thinking, he came from an innocent era of sport in which it was possible for your father’s hero to also be your own.

Between 1941, when Stan Musial arrived in the Major Leagues, until his valedictory season, 1963, he played on three World Series-winning teams, won seven batting titles, three Most Valuable Player Awards and played in 24 All-Star games. Five years after his retirement, in his first year of eligibility, he was elected to the Hall of Fame.

A larger-than-life sculpture of Musial coiled up in his inimitable, cobra-like batting stance dominates the landscape outside Busch Stadium in St Louis, where he is regarded as a civic treasure.

In my youth, fierce arguments obtained over the question of who was better, Musial or Boston’s Ted Williams. (Occasionally a New York partisan might make a case for the Yankees’ Joe DiMaggio.) There was never any resolution to that question, but since Williams and DiMaggio played in the American League, that Musial was the greatest National League player was beyond dispute.

And since for most of his career the Cardinals were the westernmost bastion of big-league baseball, their games were syndicated over a 10-state radio network that beamed Harry Caray’s play-by-pay broadcasts of Musial’s Cardinals into homes from Paducah to Denver, from Hibbing to Shreveport.

When Musial’s playing days were over he became the Cardinals’ general manager, and stayed just long enough to prove he was the best at that job, too.

After St Louis beat the Red Sox in seven games to win the 1967 World Series, he resigned and moved over to the corporate side of the Busch family business as a vice-president and goodwill ambassador for Anheuser-Busch, and it was in that connection I found myself thinking as Mr Obama draped that medal around his neck two days ago.

I’d flown from London to Dublin that day in June of 1986, and by the time I reached the city centre the friends I was supposed to be joining had already left the hotel and were out socialising somewhere.

It was a reasonable assumption that they’d probably set up shop at any one of half a dozen pubs, so I set out in search of them.

The Irish Sweepstakes had ended its association with the Irish Derby the year before, making the 1986 incarnation the first edition of the Budweiser Irish Derby, and Anheuser-Busch had pulled out all the stops. A Budweiser-sponsored soccer team was touring Ireland, and every hotel in Dublin was jam-packed with Budweiser executives and their families. There couldn’t have been an Anheuser-Busch executive above the rank of steamfitter left back in St Louis.

I’d tried several pubs in my search for my friends when I found myself passing by McDaid’s. I knew most of the old McDaid’s crowd had migrated around the corner to Grogan’s on South William Street, but I figured since I was right there I might as well have a look inside.

As I approached the door I was reminding myself this was the hallowed local of Brendan Behan and Myles na gCopaleen and Patrick Kavanagh, and then before I could reach out for the door it opened on its own and there, framed in the doorway, I found myself face-to-face at a distance of no more than two paces from Stanley Frank Musial. I was so startled by the incongruity I didn’t even blurt out “Stan the Man!”, which was probably the first thing that raced through my mind.

I ran into Musial numerous times over the quarter-century since, but that’s the one I’ll remember as long as I live.

On Tuesday, in the midst of that august company in the East Room, even Obama seemed in awe.

“Stan remains, to this day, an icon, untarnished; a beloved pillar of the community; a gentleman you’d want your kids to emulate,” said the president, who confided that his grandfather was named Stan “so I used to call him ‘Stan the Man’ in honour of you.”

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the closest thing Americans have to knighthood, sort of the peacetime equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, and there were 14 other recipients at the White House on Tuesday. Musial wasn’t even the only honoree from the world of sport – Bill Russell, the old Boston Celtics captain and coach, got one, too – but from everything I’ve seen of the ceremony, Stan the Man so stole the show it’s hard to imagine even Angela Merkel let him get away without asking for an autograph.