As 21-year-old rookies, Stan Musial and Albert Pujols hit September grand slams that helped propel the Cardinals toward postseason berths.
Since 1940, Musial, Pujols and Tim McCarver are the youngest Cardinals to hit grand slams, according to researcher Tom Orf. Each of the three was 21 when he achieved the feat.
McCarver’s first career grand slam in the second game of a doubleheader versus the Mets at New York on June 9, 1963, was his second big-league home run. It also was a fluke. Facing reliever Larry Bearnarth, McCarver lofted a fly ball that was misplayed by center fielder Rod Kanehl into an inside-the-park grand slam. You can read about it in a blog post I wrote in June 2013.
This blog post is devoted to detailing the first career grand slams by Musial and Pujols.
Stan vs. Rip
On Sept, 22, 1942, the Pirates led the Cardinals, 3-0, in the fifth inning at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis. A string of Pirates misplays helped the Cardinals score twice in the inning before loading the bases with one out.
Musial stepped to the plate against starter Rip Sewell.
In 1941, after Musial had been promoted from the minors to the Cardinals in September, he hit his first big-league home run against Sewell on Sept. 23 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. The two-run homer came in the fifth inning and stretched the Cardinals’ lead to 6-0 in a game they would win 9-0.
Now, a year later, Musial was facing Sewell again, this time with the bases loaded and a chance to erase a 3-2 Pirates lead.
In his book “Stan Musial: The Man’s Own Story” (1964, Doubleday), Musial describes what happened next:
“The first pitch was high. The second was a slider and I timed it for a tremendous drive over the right field pavilion. My first big-league grand slam homer had come off the same pitcher I touched for my first major league home run.”
Musial’s grand slam capped a six-run inning and carried the Cardinals to a 9-3 victory. The win gave St. Louis a 2.5-game lead over the second-place Dodgers with four to play. The Cardinals would win the pennant with a 106-48 mark, two games ahead of the Dodgers. Boxscore
The grand slam also was Musial’s 10th and final home run of the 1942 season. He finished his first full year in the majors with a .315 batting average, 72 RBI and 147 hits in 140 games.
Smashing a sinker
Nearly 60 years later, on Sept. 21, 2001, Pujols and the Cardinals were playing the Pirates in Pittsburgh. They entered the ninth with the score tied at 5-5.
Facing reliever Omar Olivares, who spent his first five seasons with St. Louis, the Cardinals loaded the bases with one out. That brought to the plate Pujols.
Olivares threw a sinker, hoping to induce Pujols to hit a double-play grounder.
Instead, Pujols lofted the pitch over the fence for his grand slam and a 9-5 Cardinals lead.
“That was a great pitch,” Pujols told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “I went down and got it. I wasn’t even thinking about hitting a grand slam … I just wanted to hit a sacrifice fly and score the run.”
With the victory, their eighth in a row, the Cardinals moved to 3.5 games behind the first-place Astros in the National League Central. The Astros and Cardinals would finish tied for first at 93-69, with St. Louis qualifying for the postseason in a wild-card berth.
With that home run, his 36th of the season, Pujols broke Johnny Frederick’s National League rookie record for extra-base hits in a season, with 83. Frederick had 82 for the 1929 Dodgers.
“I believe this is the best year I’ve ever seen a position player have for a club that I’ve been on,” Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said of Pujols after the game.
Pujols would finish the 2001 season with a .329 batting average, 37 home runs, 130 RBI and 194 hits in 161 games. He was the unanimous choice of all 32 voters for the National League Rookie of the Year Award. (The award didn’t exist in 1942 when Musial was a rookie.)
Pujols would go on to hit a franchise-record 12 grand slams for the Cardinals. Musial has the next-best total, with nine grand slams for St. Louis.
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