First Musial Card

Ok. Not THE first Stan Musial card, just our first real vintage Musial. Its from the 1963 Topps set highlighting the 1962 NL Batting Leaders. Musial was third that year behind Tommy Davis and Frank Robinson. Amazingly, The Man did this in his penultimate year, 21 years removed from his first AB in 1941.

I just checked out his page at Baseball Reference and am trying to figure out how someone who retired holding 17 Major League and 29 National League records and an All Star 19 out of 21 seasons was left off the initial All Century Team and had to be added later by a special panel.

Is it actually possible for a man with three MVP’s (four runners up), three World Series rings (a fourth as a GM), 3630 Hits, .331 Career BA (averaging just 33 strike outs a year), 475 HR’s, and 1951 RBI’s is under-appreciated or even under-rated? And that’s a career shortened one year for military service. And yet, 45 years after he hung them up for good Musial still ranks in the Top 10 in nine offensive categories, ten if you throw in  games played.

Its really just a sliver of a Musial card, sharing face time (literally) with two HOF’s. I picked this card up at a card shop / antique toy store in Prescott, AZ earlier this month. A neat little shop where the owner remembered me from my last visit six months ago and who offered to set aside interesting Cardinals for my next visit in Feb 2010. I’m looking forward to what they have for me next time I’m in town.