TOWER GROVE — Manager Tony La Russa did not bemoan his team’s lost five runs or even the possibility that rain washed away a potential victory for the Cardinals on Monday night. Nor did Albert Pujols seem particularly miffed that weather stole a solo home run from him. It happens, both said. Rules of the game, they said.

Mother Nature is an unforgiving official scorer.

Ask The Man.

In 1948, Cardinals Hall of Famer Stan Musial had what ranks as one of the greatest offensive seasons in baseball history. Musial hit .376, drove in 131 runs, scored 135 runs and hit 39 home runs. All of those totals led the National League, except the home runs. Musial came one shy of tying Johnny Mize and Ralph Kiner for the league lead, and therefore one jewel short of a Triple Crown.

The thing is, he hit that 40th home run.

Rain can take away the stat, but like Skip Schumaker’s catch, not the fact. 

Several years ago, when the blog was just getting its footing and the mailbag was a more regular feature (I know, I know), I received an email from a fan asking for information about Musial’s lost home run. This reader remembered it. Could recall where it was hit and what it meant. But all that wasn’t good enough to get the home run official membership on the island of lost homers, Retrosheet’s Lost Home Runs collection.

Scroll through that list and you’ll find gems like this:

7/9/1925: St. Louis Brown player-manager George Sisler homered into the right field bleachers at home off the Yankees’ Herb Pennock. The blow came in the first inning with one man on base. The game was rained out in the fourth inning.

In 1996, Ken Griffey Jr. raked an innocent first-inning home run off Cleveland starter Jack McDowell. It was early September, so season numbers were starting to take shape but there was still plenty of time for the game to be made up and another Griffey shot to find the bleachers. Yet, at the end of the season Griffey finished with 49 home runs. Hardly a travesty. Cooperstown still awaits. But, Griffey went on to hit 56 home runs in each of the next two seasons.

So?

Well, in 1998, Mark McGwire became the first player in baseball history to have three consecutive 50-homer seasons. Rain made it so. McGwire wouldn’t have set it alone if weather hadn’t erased Griffey’s home run back in September 1996.

The record of Griffey’s lost home run is there on Retrosheet because the date, the rainout and the opposing pitcher are all documented and can all be verified. There is plenty of resource material to back up Griffey’s shot. Such information has been elusive when it comes to Musial’s.

The Man’s lost homer is an accepted part of Cardinals history. So much so that when I worked on a story about Musial for last year’s special section, I just wrote about it without attribution. It’s hard to find a local article about that 1948 season that doesn’t just assert that Musial had a home run washed out by a rainout at the Polo Grounds. In James N. Giglio’s biography of Musial, he writes matter-of-factly: “If not for a rain-canceled game, which washed out a home run, he would have equaled the league lead and won the triple crown award … obtained by only four previous National Leaguers.”

In his memoirs, Hall of Fame sportswriter – the very definition of “baseball writer” — Bob Broeg wrote:

Of course I thoroughly enjoyed Musial’s great season, one of the finest any major league player ever had. Sure, many have hit for a higher average than .376, but Musial had the maximum overall power season of any player since the jackrabbit ball era of 1929-30.

He missed tying for the top in homers by one rained out home run. If it had counted, he would have won the Triple Crown that year … and in addition have been the only player of this century to lead the league in runs, hits, double, triples, and slugging percentage.

What a year!

Since receiving that email asking me for information about Musial’s Lost Homer, I’ve been on its trail. The goal is to get it logged with the others, where it belongs, alongside Pujols’ grand slam at Wrigley in 2003, Tino Martinez’s two home runs in that same game, Hank Aaron’s “756″ and “757″ home runs, Joe Adcock’s negated home run in Harvey Haddix’s perfect game and Cliff Johnson would-be record-setter in 1975.

Johnson homered in six consecutive games, until rain took one away.

Musial’s belongs with that group.

Combing through biographies, histories and other Cardinals-related tomes, I’ve found some cool stats — Musial took a .400 average into July, hit .410 at the All-Star break — and numerous references to the Lost Homer. But none of the exact details needed to have it listed with the others.

With help from some other researchers, we went back through the newspapers of the era and picked through the game coverage, looking for a rain out, looking for a description of the home run – hoping for a partial box score. Trips to the “morgue” proved fruitless. It’s possible to triangulate potential dates using the Cardinals 1948 schedule and Musial’s own game-by-game from the year. August 3, 1948, seems the best date to focus on, though there are other possibilities. Microfiche from that day and others and archives from weeks around the dates, however, offered no additional information. No date. No opposing pitcher. No luck. 

But Musial himself knows he hit it. In Peter Golenbeck’s oral history of the Cardinals’ organization, “The Spirit of St. Louis”, Musial recalls:

In ‘48 I came within one home run of the Triple Crown. I had one home run rained out, actually, and Red Schoendienst reminded me that I hit another ball in Shibe Park in Philadelphia that hit the speaks of the PA system above the fence, and Frank Dascoli called it a two-base hit. Red said it should have been a home run, or else I’d have led the league in everything.

It’s been about six months since I spent time digging into the past looking for the information, and the trail has gone cold. But it shouldn’t. So, I’m asking for help. Join the Musial Lost Homer Project. Email me suggestions or clues at dgoold@post-dispatch.com. There’s got to be somebody out there who heard the game, scored the game, can help find the exact date, identify the pitcher and lead us in the direction of getting Musial’s 40th home run on the Retrosheet list.

The purpose is not to rewrite history, just to log a lost homer — for context.

Because then there is a record — beyond the anecdotes and accepted local history — that Musial’s 1948 was not only one of the greatest seasons in history, it may just have been the greatest. With that 40th home run, he would have led the NL in (all stats unchanged, save for the added HR):

• Batting Average: .376
• On-base Percentage: .450
• Slugging Percentage: .702
• Runs scored: 135
• Hits: 230
• Doubles: 46
• Triples: 18
• Home Runs: 40*
• RBIs: 131

No modern player has ever led the league in every offensive category, not like that. So when a home run is washed out in March, or a couple RBIs are lost to Mother Nature’s whim, and it seems OK in April, that’s fine. But check back in September.

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