secret on Stan’s birthday, November 21, 1939. Kerr and his wife, Cora, had no children, and they took the young couple into their home.
On May 25, 1940, Stan and Lil were married at St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church in Daytona Beach. For Lil, this involved a conversion from the Orthodox faith of her family to the Roman Catholicism of herhusband. They would always celebrate their anniversary in conjunction with Stan’s birthday; many years later, one family member was surprised to learn about the May wedding.
Far away from her own protective family, Lil now had two kind people looking after her. In early August 1940, Lil gave birth to a son, whom they named Richard Stanley Musial, in tribute to their host.
BECAUSE OF the small roster, Kerr began using Musial in the outfield. Later in August, Musial dove for a line drive, landing on his left shoulder. Pitching in pain the rest of the season, he managed to win 18 games and lose only 5, by far his best record as a pitcher, and his ERA was an excellent 2.62, but his wildness had gotten worse. Then again, he batted .311 in 113 games.
At the end of the season, Stan and Lil stayed in Daytona Beach, where he worked in the sporting goods department at Montgomery Ward for $25 a week, to supplement his salary, which had been $100 a month for essentially six months. Ki Duda wrote letters telling him to be patient, but Musial realized the Cardinals were not about to bring in a lower-echelon pitcher for medical treatment.
“I didn’t even see a doctor,” he said years later, recalling the legions of players in all those Cardinal camps. “You’re mostly a number.”
Musial realistically began to fear he was finished as a pitcher. At some point Lil went home to Donora to stay with her family.
“He called me one day and he was kind of despondent, and he said, ‘I might have to come and work in the Donora mills,’ ” Lil recalled. “I got my father on the phone and he said, ‘Now you just keep on playing baseball because I’ll take care of Lil and Dick here. Don’t worry about anything.’ ”
Dickie Kerr would not let him quit.
“You won’t make it to the top as a pitcher, but you’ll get there some way because you’re a damn fine ballplayer and a big-league hitter,” Kerr told him.
SKIP AHEAD nearly two decades to 1958, when the Cardinals stopped in Houston on their way north and Musial visited Cora and Dick Kerr. Dickwas now turning sixty-five and working as a bookkeeper for a construction company. Musial told him to go out and buy himself a birthday present—a house.
“He had mentioned a house before but we had never taken it seriously,” Kerr said when the secret came out. “This time he told us to get busy. So we did.”
The Kerrs moved into a subdivision where homes cost between $10,000 and $20,000 in 1958 dollars.Over the years it has been widely written that the Musials gave the house to the Kerrs, but in fact they held title to it, which suggests the Musials also paid the taxes on it, and who knows what else. Either way, it was a generous act toward a couple who had kept them going in a shaky time.
The Kerrs and Lil’s family helped Musial keep his confidence and hit his way out of obscurity. By that summer of changes, Stan and Lil had known each other for six years. Their long and stable marriage would be a beacon for everybody who knew them.
12
TAKEOFF
I N A nation that professes to love underdogs, very few great American athletes have come as far as Stan Musial did from 1940 to 1941. That glorious year is one of the great sagas of sport—the slow, sputtering toy firecracker of a minor-league career suddenly turned into a rocket.
Musial had good reason to doubt himself as a pitcher, and he had only vague hopes he could make it as a hitter. In May 1940, Ollie Vanek, who had scouted Musial three years earlier back in Pennsylvania, was assigned to inspect the Daytona Beach club. His evaluation of Musial: “Good form and curve, fast
On May 25, 1940, Stan and Lil were married at St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church in Daytona Beach. For Lil, this involved a conversion from the Orthodox faith of her family to the Roman Catholicism of herhusband. They would always celebrate their anniversary in conjunction with Stan’s birthday; many years later, one family member was surprised to learn about the May wedding.
Far away from her own protective family, Lil now had two kind people looking after her. In early August 1940, Lil gave birth to a son, whom they named Richard Stanley Musial, in tribute to their host.
BECAUSE OF the small roster, Kerr began using Musial in the outfield. Later in August, Musial dove for a line drive, landing on his left shoulder. Pitching in pain the rest of the season, he managed to win 18 games and lose only 5, by far his best record as a pitcher, and his ERA was an excellent 2.62, but his wildness had gotten worse. Then again, he batted .311 in 113 games.
At the end of the season, Stan and Lil stayed in Daytona Beach, where he worked in the sporting goods department at Montgomery Ward for $25 a week, to supplement his salary, which had been $100 a month for essentially six months. Ki Duda wrote letters telling him to be patient, but Musial realized the Cardinals were not about to bring in a lower-echelon pitcher for medical treatment.
“I didn’t even see a doctor,” he said years later, recalling the legions of players in all those Cardinal camps. “You’re mostly a number.”
Musial realistically began to fear he was finished as a pitcher. At some point Lil went home to Donora to stay with her family.
“He called me one day and he was kind of despondent, and he said, ‘I might have to come and work in the Donora mills,’ ” Lil recalled. “I got my father on the phone and he said, ‘Now you just keep on playing baseball because I’ll take care of Lil and Dick here. Don’t worry about anything.’ ”
Dickie Kerr would not let him quit.
“You won’t make it to the top as a pitcher, but you’ll get there some way because you’re a damn fine ballplayer and a big-league hitter,” Kerr told him.
SKIP AHEAD nearly two decades to 1958, when the Cardinals stopped in Houston on their way north and Musial visited Cora and Dick Kerr. Dickwas now turning sixty-five and working as a bookkeeper for a construction company. Musial told him to go out and buy himself a birthday present—a house.
“He had mentioned a house before but we had never taken it seriously,” Kerr said when the secret came out. “This time he told us to get busy. So we did.”
The Kerrs moved into a subdivision where homes cost between $10,000 and $20,000 in 1958 dollars.Over the years it has been widely written that the Musials gave the house to the Kerrs, but in fact they held title to it, which suggests the Musials also paid the taxes on it, and who knows what else. Either way, it was a generous act toward a couple who had kept them going in a shaky time.
The Kerrs and Lil’s family helped Musial keep his confidence and hit his way out of obscurity. By that summer of changes, Stan and Lil had known each other for six years. Their long and stable marriage would be a beacon for everybody who knew them.
12
TAKEOFF
I N A nation that professes to love underdogs, very few great American athletes have come as far as Stan Musial did from 1940 to 1941. That glorious year is one of the great sagas of sport—the slow, sputtering toy firecracker of a minor-league career suddenly turned into a rocket.
Musial had good reason to doubt himself as a pitcher, and he had only vague hopes he could make it as a hitter. In May 1940, Ollie Vanek, who had scouted Musial three years earlier back in Pennsylvania, was assigned to inspect the Daytona Beach club. His evaluation of Musial: “Good form and curve, fast
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