He crouched, stirring his bat like a weapon in a low, slow moving arc away from his body. He took three or four practice swings and followed up with a silly-looking hula wiggle to help him relax. A lefty, he dug in with his left foot on the back line of the batter’s box, and assumed a closed stance with his right foot about twelve inches in front of his left.

Stan rang up this amazing collection of stats with one of the oddest looking batting stances of all time. Only Tony Gwynn has retired with a higher batting average since. He walloped 475 homers and retired after twenty-two years in 1963 with a batting average of. Stan is also fourth all time in hits (3,630), third in doubles (725), tied for nineteenth in triples (177-the most since Paul Waner retired in 1945 with 191), fifth in RBIs (1,951) and seventh in runs scored (1,949). The most impressive stat in Stan’s career is his total bases mark of 6,134, second all-time to home run king Henry Aaron’s 6,856. While Ted led the American League in batting seven times and slugging nine times, Stan was atop the NL in batting seven times and slugging six times. Stan was truly “The Man” in the summer of 1948.ĭuring the 1940s and 1950s, Musial was the National League’s rival to Ted Williams.

His 429 total bases were only 21 behind the NL record of Rogers Hornsby in 1922. He also tagged a career high 39 homers, just one behind the 40 of co-leaders Ralph Kiner and Johnny Mize. “Stan the Man” paced the National League in hits (230), doubles (46), triples (18), runs (135), RBIs (131), batting average (.376), total bases (429), on-base percentage (.450), and slugging percentage (.702). No other player in major league history has dominated a season offensively as thoroughly as Stan Musial did when he topped the National League in nine categories in 1948.

Stan musial baseball