Did Stan Musial call his shot in the 1955 All-Star Game? Hank Aaron certainly thought so. On July 12, 1955, almost exactly five years after his longtime teammate, Red Schoendienst, hit the game-winning home run in the 1950 All-Star Game, Musial smacked the first pitch in the bottom of the 12th inning over the right-field […]
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Tommy Lasorda may have been a Hall of Fame manager, but as a pitcher, the native of Norristown, Pennsylvania, appeared in just 26 big-league games. With a career 6.48 ERA, Lasorda never earned a win, and may have Cardinals outfielder Wally Moon to thank for it after Moon sent him to the hospital on May
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When Enos Slaughter was informed that he had been traded to the Yankees on April 11, 1954, the Cardinals’ captain broke down and wept. Slaughter was just two weeks away from his 38th birthday and the Cardinals were two days away from opening their season against the Cubs when they finalized the deal that sent
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For 34 of the past 35 years, the birds on the bat had adorned the Cardinals’ jerseys. On February 26, 1956, Cardinals general manager Frank Lane announced that the iconic logo would be missing from their uniforms during the upcoming season. “We hope the new uniforms will match the new, bold look and attitude of
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On February 18, 1955, the Cardinals signed promising third base prospect Ken Boyer to his first big-league contract with an eye toward making him their starting third baseman that season. The Cardinals already had cleared room for Boyer by trading all-star third baseman Ray Jablonski and pitcher Gerry Staley to Cincinnati for relief pitcher Frank
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A decade after he briefly held out of spring training in a bid for a $5,000 raise, Stan Musial became the first $100,000 player in National League history. On January 29, 1958, the Cardinals called a morning press conference at Anheuser-Busch Brewery to announce that Musial, who had been playing for $80,000 per season since
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It took a lot to make Stan Musial visibly angry. But when the legendary Cardinals outfielder learned just before boarding the team’s train to Pittsburgh that the Cardinals had traded Red Schoendienst, his roommate for more than a decade, Musial made his displeasure clear. “The rest of us got the word that Red had been traded
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On June 30, 1954, Joe Cunningham kicked off his 12-year major-league career with a single, homer, and five RBIs in an 11-3 St. Louis Cardinals victory over the Cincinnati Redlegs. Cunningham had been with the Cardinals’ International League affiliate, the Rochester Red Wings, on June 29 when manager Harry Walker informed the 22-year-old that he
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Even future Hall of Famer Hoyt Wilhelm couldn’t keep Stan Musial in the ballpark on May 2, 1954. In an afternoon doubleheader at Sportsman’s Park, Musial became the first player in major-league history to hit five home runs in a single day, smacking three home runs over the right-field wall in Game 1 before adding
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April 13, 1954, marked a new beginning in Cardinals baseball as Tom Alston became the first black player to make the major-league club and Wally Moon became the second Cardinal to homer in his first career at-bat. Just two and a half months earlier, the Cardinals traded Eddie Erautt and Dick Sisler, agreed to option