The search for The Man’s lost homer
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 April, or a couple RBIs are lost to Mother Nature’s whim, and it seems OK in July, that’s fine. But check back in September.
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Derrick Goold said he was going to Mizzou for capital-J journalism, but after growing up in the Time Zone Baseball Forgot he was really drawn to MU sitting between two major-league cities. Goold joined the Post-Dispatch in 2001 after working for The Times-Picayune and Rocky Mountain News, covering sports from LSU to NHL and every level of baseball in between. 
The HR would have given him another run scored and at least 1 more RBI as well…
And another hit and 4 total bases to bump of the other numbers, of course. Not sure if that would have meant anything historically speaking.
Aaron,
Or, it might have dropped his average … just on the off chance he was, say, 1-for-3 before the rain struck. Figured it’s best to leave his other numbers untouched. They stand on their own.
dg
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True. Hard for some of us to imagine a 1 for 3 dropping a batting average.
The hit also would have ruined the perfect 1815 hits at home at 1815 hits on the road.
DG …………. Which team(s) were the rainouts that year against? I assume you researched the archives of those teams newspapers? Good blog ……… Stan was my childhood hero!
Couple of thoughts:
1. Since Stan and Red are both still living, have you considered asking them? Seems like of them could at least push you in the right direction and maybe even tell you how far into the game they got before it was rained out.
2. What did Stan do in the make-up again (I’m assuming they played one)? If he hit a homerun during the make-up game, then he still had the same number of homeruns (assuming he hit only one during the make-up game and would have hit only one during the rainout).
3. Since it was at the Polo Grounds, have you searched all of the New York papers of the time?
FAN,
1. Yes. Of course. And I have asked them. They are sure it happened, not sure when or against which pitcher. It was last spring training that I talked to Red about it a couple times and he helped me focus in on a possible date.
2. Once the rainout is identified then the makeup date can be found, too. For the purpose of getting the homer logged on Retrosheet the stats in the makeup game aren’t germane. But to illustrate the Triple Crown possibilities of the season — well, yes, makeup date performance would be very important.
3. As many as I could find, including some time spent sifting through Microfiche at libraries and firing off some emails for assistance. I received an email just a few minutes ago that may have uncovered the same NY Times article I did: It confirms a rainout on April 3, but no information about whether or not any of the game was played (it is implied …) and certainly no mention of a Musial homer.
dg
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Stan is my most favorite Cardinal of all time. I was too young to remember the 1948 season — 1 year old — but when I did start to follow the Cards when I was about 6 or 7, he was the player. This is an interesting story that I’d never been aware of. THE MAN!!
Mike
I saw several newspapers on Aug 4th 1948 report the rain out. But also no mention of any stats from that game. Now to be fair, one would have to make sure the other top home run hitters didn’t have rain outs that cost them homers too.
This is quite a worthy mystery. I don’t know how schedules typically looked back in ‘48, but I’d imagine there were rainouts against the Dodgers on May 5th and the Giants on the 12th. The almanac says there was rain on both days.
Do you imagine one of the papers would have printed a full schedule in the days leading up to the home opener? That’d be a good place to start if you want to find all rainouts and makeup games.
it would seem #10 is right on as to possible rain dates in the schedule against the Dodgers and Giants for the 1948 season…but as far as i can tell the Birds were at home for the first half of may 1948 (listed as the home team on all the records I find May 1-16)…which would make an early may game v. the dodgers really unlikely to have been played in new york, let alone the polo grounds, which was the home of the giants, the 1948 Dodgers played their home games at Ebbetts Field…
Didn’t “the man” also have controversial error called on a “hit” that would have given him a longer hitting streak than Joe DiMaggio?
there’s an article form the 8/4/48 NYT titled “Giants To Oppose Cards Twice Today” which clearly states that the make up game for the 8/3 rainout was the *night game*, which is important to the triple crown discussion, because Stan hit a two run homerun in the day game.
From the Box score in the following day’s paper, Ron Northey hit the only homerun in the nitecap.
I hope you or someone else can find the rained-out home run of
Musial’s in 1948. However, if there are eye witnesses who say the
ball Musial hit in Shibe Park really did hit the speaker system,
should not that have been counted a home run — and could not the
ruling on that be changed even now? Haven’t there been cases when a
ruling in baseball has been changed at a later date?
Another thing: in your discussion of Musial’s 1948 season, you list
these categories –
Batting Average: .376
On-base Percentage: .450
Slugging Percentage: .702
Runs scored: 135
Hits: 230
Doubles: 46
Triples: 18
Home Runs: 40*
RBIs: 131
That is nine categories in all. However, aren’t we also supposed to
count Total Bases as a tenth category? Musial led in TB also.
The result is that Musial’s 1948 season is one of four in baseball
history — if my research is accurate — when a player led in 9 of
the 10 major offensive categories.
Two other players beside Musial led in nine categories: Nap Lajoie in
1901 and Rogers Hornsby in 1921 and 1922.
If you compare Musial’s 1948 season with Nap Lajoie’s 1901 season,
you find that Musial’s stats are better than Lajoie’s in six of the
ten categories, and if you compare Musial’s 1948 season with
Hornsby’s 1921 season, you find that Musial’s stats also beat
Hornsby’s in six categories. However, Hornsby’s 1922 stats beat
Musial’s 1948 stats in eight categories.
Thus the argument could be made that Hornsby’s 1922 season is the
best offensive season ever. However, if the ruling were changed on
that ball Musial hit in Shibe Park, then Stan the Man would be the
only player in baseball history to either lead or tie in all ten
offensive categories, and it would be Musial’s 1948 season that would
arguably be the best ever.
G.
In all respect to your experience, Have you tried defunct papers in the ny area that may have covered the game. Or perhaps mentions in other publications of the time. Also who were the folks covering the game officially for the home team. (Giants?) Is the info available? Just asking? Thanks
I don’t know how anyone could have rated this post less than 5 stars. I had no idea of Musial’s utter dominance that season. Fascinating read. Good hunting on getting that wiped out longball acknowledged. If anyone deserves the kudos, it’s Stan the Man.
May 25, 1948, was rained out: “Damp and dripping weather forced the Giants to put off until tonight their arclight contest with the Cardinals at the Polo Grounds. The scheduled matinee between the Dodgers and the Cubs, who meet tonight at Ebbets Field, also was rained out.”–NYT article on the 26th ; Sports, page 32, Joseph M. Sheehan [no comment about a game in progress is mentioned]
The games of the 3rd and 4th of August have already appeared in the comments.
Aug. 5 had a game in the original schedule per Retrosheet, but no linescore or game story in the NYT of the 6th. There was an announcement of the engagement of Giants outfielder Willard Marshall to Marie Antoinette Bruni of Palisades, N.J., however.
The single-game series that the Cards were scheduled to play on the 19th of September turned into a doubleheader. The second game was called after seven innings due to darkness.
wow…much more detail than I remember the topic engendering. It has been some 5+ years since I heard discussion of this topic, and maybe closer to 10 (can’t remember if Brian Gunn or Pip (Fungoes) covered it, as they have covered so much.
Off topic, and controversy greatly aside, McGwire had a 72nd homerun taken away a few games before the end of the ‘98 season against, I believe, the Brewers at home. The ball landed over the centerfield fence and bounced back and the ump ruled it a live ball.
Not taht it matters as Bonds hit 73 and we all know how legitimate the controversy around both players’ homers are.
but interesting side to this fabulous article and commentaries!
I can’t wait to read the conclusion.
After reading this article, it just reinforces the obvious need for MLB to adopt a suspended game policy for rainouts. As long as they do it for freak accidents (San Diego light fixture fire in 2001), extra inning rainouts, or a health crisis (Larry Dierker’s seizure in 1999), why do rainouts have to be different?
As long as Monday’s game was going to be made up Tuesday, what would be the justification against resuming Monday’s 5-1 3rd inning lead with Izturis on first?
Derrick,
Have you been over to look through the Globe-Democrat archives at UMSL’s library?
One of our folks - Mr.Murphy - over at BOTB seems sure it was the Aug. 3 date, as he recalls listening to it. Either way I do hope you can nail this one down.
There WAS a rainout on Aug 3.
But - maddeningly - no confirmation of any homer. Or even that any of the game was actually played.
There’s also a seperate item confirming the double header for Aug. 4, with games at 2pm and 8:30pm at the Polo Grounds.
But there were loads of papers in NY at the time - a troll through one of the big NY libraries might turn up something more on point.
From the New York Times, Aug. 4, 1948:
Quote:
GIANTS TO OPPOSE CARDS TWICE TODAY
Afternoon and Night Contests Dictated By Schedule — Cubs to Play Dodgers Tonight
Having gone from one extreme to the other, with something that could be described conservatively as a record-shattering crash, Manager Leo Durocher today will try to get his Giants back on track on the happy medium beam in a slight variation of the two-a-day routine.
The rain which forced a postponement of last night’s scheduled clash with the Cardinals, also forced the clubs into a novelty. Schedule conditions being what they are, with time running out, it was necessary to card last night’s game for tonight.
This means that today a regularly scheduled game will be played, commencing at 2 o’clock, instead of teh customary 2:30 P.M. Last night’s postponed game will be played tonight, when tickets purchased for last night will be honored. It was specified in his announcement by Secretary Ed Brannick that tickets purchased for last night will be honored only tonight…
* * *
Goes on for a few more paragraphs, but nothing else of note. It’s all on PDF in the Times database.
That rainout did cause Stan to have a most unusual record: he had exactly half of his career hits at home and half on the road. So, the loss of a Triple Crown gave him a career distinction held by no other member of the Hall of Fame.
McGwire’s disallowed ‘98 homerun was in Milwaukee; it would only have given him 71 on the season.
The year Hack Wilson set the NL homerun record with 56 homers he hit another one over the wall that bounced back and was ruled a double. Even the pitcher thought it should have been a homerun.
Babe Ruth also had a game-ending homerun that did not count as a homerun because the winning run was on first base at the time and scored before Ruth could score (Boston against the White Sox, 8 July 1918). Baseball decided not to change the records because of the lore of 714.
I figure this might have been thought of already, derrick; but, at the time of the awards being announced, have you checked the papers in the STL, or in the “greater metropolitan Donora, PA, or Pittsgburgh, PA, areas for that story? someone from his hometown region may have written about it.
Derrick - love the article, but it got me thinking… eventhough Musial’s HR was washed out, preventing him from tying for the lead, did the same thing happen to Johnny Mize or Ralph Kiner? Perhaps Mize or Kiner had HRs that were washed out as well, which still would have prevented Musial from tying the lead… Just curious…
Thanks for the great article. Along the same lines and another article of yours a few weeks back, my dad remembers in Gibson’s 1968 season that he lost at least a few innings in a game he was pitching a shut out in due to a rain out (my dad remembers the score being 7-0 when the game was called). Obviously, if this is true and the game had been played to five innings that would have helped make his ERA better… Any thoughts on that one?
Thanks for the articles, Matthew
I have video of a lost HR for Jack Clark in 1987. How do I get the info to retrosheet? Always bugged me the Ripper got hurt in ‘87, plus lost that HR, plus lost the 2 Eric Davis robbed HRs. Would have had 45 at least that year.