Word: musial
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Sport, where fans can be expected to know the score already, this week's stories isolate two great competitors: golf's Arnold Palmer, who has won more tournaments so far this season than anyone before him, and baseball's Stan Musial, who does not need the money, but is now breaking the biggest records after 21 years with the St. Louis Cardinals. Both men, incidentally, are old TIME cover characters revisited...
...runway, bound for St. Louis, the atmosphere inside was glum enough: the staggering Cardinals had just dropped a doubleheader to the Pittsburgh Pirates. It quickly got worse. Just 30 seconds after takeoff, a portside engine conked out, and Cardinal ballplayers stared tensely at the feathered prop. Only Stan Musial seemed unruffled. Grinning from ear to ear, he turned to a teammate: "I can see the headline now. CARDINAL PLANE CRASHES -MUSIAL LONE SURVIVOR...
...Musial's wry jest had come true two seasons back, no Cardinal fan would have been much surprised. At 41 and in his 21st big-league season, "Stan the Man" has survived long past a ballplayer's professional life expectancy. His contemporaries - Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Owen, Jackie Robinson - are fishing, running bowling alleys, and collecting votes for the Hall of Fame. Yet Musial, his reflexes still sharp and his aging muscles still limber, keeps right on playing leftfield for the Cards with a young man's speed. And each time he uncoils from his familiar...
...such swashbuckling company, Stan Musial seems pleasantly out of place-living proof that nice guys do not necessarily finish last. Nobody has ever seen him sulk or throw a tantrum. Unlike Ruth, he has never punched a cop. Unlike Cobb, he has never attacked a crippled heckler in the stands. Unlike Wagner, he has never stuffed a ball into a base runner's teeth. He is, says ex-Teammate Joe Garagiola, a "saint with money." Only once, in 1959, has he openly disputed an umpire's call. The ump's reaction was hilarious-he gaped at Musial...
...Musial is more ballplayer than businessman, and the game, after all the years, is still fun. "I know a lot of players dislike the life, the traveling," he says. "But I like everything about it. I just enjoy being a big-league ballplayer...