STAN MUSIAL

There was no mystery to Stan Musial, and that was the mystery. A left-handed kid out of Donora, Pennsylvania, he came up with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1941 and stayed until 1963, which in baseball is roughly the lifespan of a redwood. He missed one season to the Navy, in 1945, and when he came back he picked up the bat as if he'd only stepped out for a sandwich.

The numbers pile up like cordwood: .331 lifetime, 3,630 hits, 725 doubles, 177 triples, 475 home runs, 1,951 runs batted in, 1,599 walks. A .417 on-base percentage and a .559 slugging percentage, which is the kind of pair that gets a man measured for a monument while he's still cashing paychecks.

He won three pennants in the forties and three more in the sixties, and in between he simply refused to have a bad year. In 1948 he hit .376, slugged .702, and collected 230 hits, 46 of them doubles and 18 of them triples, which is a season most players would frame and hang over the mantel. In 1943 he batted .357 with 220 hits and 48 doubles. In 1946, .365 with 228 hits, 50 doubles, 20 triples. In 1949 he drew 107 walks in 157 games and still slugged .624.

They called him Stan the Man, and it wasn't flattery. It was a scouting report. He hit everywhere, he hit everybody, and he did it with a swing that looked like a man opening a screen door. Cooperstown called in 1969. He had already been there for years, in spirit, at the plate.