RetroSimba

Joining the Navy helped Stan Musial boost his baseball career with the Cardinals.

On Jan. 22, 1945, seven months after passing his Navy physical, Musial, 24, was inducted and sent to the United States Naval Training Center at Bainbridge, Md.

“I was really relieved to go into service when my draft board finally called in January 1945,” Musial said in his book “Stan Musial: The Man’s Own Story.”

Musial had helped the Cardinals win three consecutive National League pennants and two World Series championships during the World War II years 1942 through 1944.

In a January 1945 edition, The Sporting News wrote of Musial, “The Cardinals consider themselves lucky that the young clouter was permitted to remain with the club through three war seasons. Sam Breadon (owner of the Cardinals) was reconciled to losing Musial last winter.”

While receiving his naval training at the Bainbridge facility near the banks of the Susquehanna River, Musial also played for its baseball team.

Though he was a two-time National League all-star, a NL batting champion (.357 in 1943) and a NL Most Valuable Player Award winner (1943), Musial learned two important baseball skills at Bainbridge.

Serious about first

Musial had played all three outfield positions for the Cardinals. At Bainbridge, the athletic officer, Lt. Jerry O’Brien, instructed Musial to play first base.

“I was amused,” said Musial. “O’Brien was not.”

Said O’Brien to Musial: “You’re terrible.”

Stung by the criticism, Musial worked on becoming an adept first baseman. The effort paid off for him and the Cardinals. Musial would play 1,016 games at first base for St. Louis, extending his career and helping the club.

Pull with power

The other skill Musial learned at Bainbridge was how to pull pitches with power.

“Service personnel wanted to see the home run,” said Musial. “So to pull more often, to hit the long ball, I altered my batting stance a bit. I moved up closer to the plate. This proved to be an important step in my evolution as a hitter.”

Before joining the Navy, Musial’s single-season high in home runs for the Cardinals was 13 in 1943. In 1948, he hit a career-high 39 home runs, starting a streak of slugging 20 or more for 10 consecutive seasons.

Popular with the other Navy recruits at Bainbridge, Musial “autographed the inside of the white sailor caps of many of his fellow boots, by insistent request,” The Sporting News reported.

No Musial, no title

Musial was one of three regulars from the 1944 World Series championship team who went into military service in 1945. Musial and outfielder Danny Litwhiler missed the entire 1945 season. Catcher Walker Cooper missed all but four games.

Johnny Hopp, the Cardinals’ center fielder in 1944, moved to right field to replace Musial in 1945. The Cardinals reacquired Buster Adams from the Phillies to take over for Hopp in center. Rookie Red Schoendienst, a natural infielder, replaced Litwhiler as left fielder. Backup Ken O’Dea took over the catching for Cooper.

“I still think the Cards have enough pitching to finish first,” Musial said in April 1945. “That’s the big thing that will win it, the pitching _ and that great boy (Marty) Marion at short.”

Pie Traynor, a Pittsburgh radio commentator after a Hall of Fame playing career for the Pirates, predicted the 1945 Cardinals wouldn’t overcome the loss of Musial. “Few realize the real greatness of Stan,” Traynor said. “He is a natural hustler, he is on the bases continually and he is one of the best base runners in the game.”

The 1945 Cardinals earned 95 wins, but finished in second place, three games behind the Cubs, who won eight of their last 10.

Repair work

Musial completed his training at Bainbridge on April 9, 1945, and was assigned to the ship repair unit at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

“I never did learn how to repair ships,” Musial said.

In the fall of 1945, Musial requested a leave to visit his ailing father in Pennsylvania. The request eventually was granted and he got there after Christmas. At the end of his leave, in January 1946, Musial was assigned to the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

“I was listed among ship repairmen assigned to dismantle a British destroyer,” Musial said. “The day before I was scheduled to work, I walked over to watch men already at work, wearing goggles and heavy gloves and carrying blow torches. I realized a green pea like me could wind up maiming himself or someone else.”

Musial asked an officer, “Sir, I’m a ship repairman who never has repaired a ship. For my sake and the Navy’s, can’t you please have my orders changed?”

The officer agreed. Two months later, in March 1946, Musial was discharged at Bainbridge. After taking a train to Philadelphia, Musial and two colleagues hitchhiked together to their homes in Pennsylvania. After a week at home in Donora, Musial reported to Cardinals spring training camp and played the entire 1946 season, helping them to their third World Series crown in five years.

Previously: How a B-17 nearly clipped Cardinals in World Series

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(Updated April 6, 2026)

Recognition for being a player of multiple skills was as important to Lou Brock as being elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

On Jan. 7, 1985, Brock got elected his initial time on the Baseball Writers Association of America Hall of Fame ballot.

Though base stealing was his signature talent, attributes such as smarts, work ethic, teamwork, being a catalyst and ability to intimidate foes helped make Brock a Hall of Famer.

Aside from the inaugural Hall of Fame class of Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson, the 14 players who preceded Brock in being elected their first time on the ballot were Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Bob Feller, Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax, Ernie Banks, Willie Mays, Warren Spahn, Mickey Mantle, Al Kaline, Bob Gibson, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson and Brooks Robinson.

“I think my greatest gift was the ability to be a force on the field, to beat you many ways,” Brock said to United Press International. “I was an unpredictable guy who could beat you in the clutch.”

Red Schoendienst, Brock’s manager from 1965-76, said to Super Sports magazine in 1969, “What’s there he can’t do? He’s a streak on the bases. He can hit and he also can hit with power. He can turn singles into doubles and doubles into triples. He can cover the outfield with the best around … He has to be the most exciting player in the game.”

Brock was named on 315 of 395 ballots (79.5 percent). A candidate needed to be named on 75 percent of the ballots to get elected.

Also elected that year was Hoyt Wilhelm. A knuckleball specialist, Wilhelm was the first relief pitcher elected. He played for nine teams, including the 1957 Cardinals.

Food for thought

Growing up in rural Louisiana, Brock didn’t pay attention much to baseball early in his boyhood until a teacher assigned him to research the lives of players, such as Jackie Robinson and Stan Musial, and present a report to the class.

In the book “Redbirds Revisited,” Brock recalled to authors David Craft and Tom Owens, “In stumbling through what I’d read about these ballplayers, I guess there was this one paragraph that stated these guys got something like $8 to $10 a day meal money. This was an economically poor rural community, remember, and one thing school kids identified with was lunch. Eating. A meal. I had trouble getting a quarter for meal money, and these guys were getting maybe 40 quarters a day. I thought, ‘Wow. Can you believe that?’ That stayed with me, and I wanted to learn more about baseball.”

Brock began playing sandlot baseball, went to Southern University, excelled in the sport there, and signed with the Cubs.

Offensive force

Brock played 16 years (1964-79) with the Cardinals after four seasons (1961-64) with the Cubs. His most impressive career statistics: 938 stolen bases (the National League record) and 3,023 hits in 2,616 games.

With the Cardinals, Brock had 888 steals, 1,427 runs and 2,713 hits in 2,289 games. Primarily a left fielder, Brock ranks second to Stan Musial all-time among Cardinals in hits, runs and games.

(With 1,469 strikeouts as a Cardinal, 20 more than Ray Lankford, Brock is the club’s franchise leader in that category, too. “I’m the type of hitter who leaves the bench swinging and that’s why I don’t really possess the qualifications for a leadoff man,” Brock told Super Sports magazine. “I don’t look for walks, the way a leadoff hitter should … I just look for the baseball. I don’t care if it’s not in the strike zone. I see it, I hit it.”

Brock also ranks second all-time among big leaguers in steals (Rickey Henderson has 1,406). He led the National League in steals eight times, including 1974, when he had a career-high 118 at age 35.

“His speed meant so much that he had a greater effect and worried more pitchers than any home run hitter did,” Ted Sizemore, the Cardinals infielder who often batted second in the order behind Brock in 1974, told The Sporting News.

Said Brock: “I was a force that had to be reckoned with.”

In a 2014 interview with Cardinals Magazine, Brock said, “The stolen base artist has a passion. He is always seeking to occupy a piece of territory behind the enemy line, and there is something distasteful to the opposition about getting out there and taking that territory.

“If you hit a double, you actually land at second base, but if you walk, there’s something arrogant about looking at second base and saying, ‘I want to go over there and stand, and I’m going to do it between pitches.’ ”

Asked to describe his legacy, Brock said it was an “ability to light the fuse to enthusiasm, to cause teams and myself to play to the limit of their ability. You become a chemist, which makes a team tick. I think I had that ability.”

Will to win

Acquired along with pitchers Paul Toth and Jack Spring from the Cubs for pitchers Ernie Broglio and Bobby Shantz and outfielder Doug Clemens on June 15, 1964, Brock sparked the Cardinals to two World Series titles (1964 and 1967) and three National League pennants.

“He was a hard worker,” Bing Devine, the Cardinals general manager who made the trade, said to the Associated Press. “He worked very hard to become the expert base stealer he was. The base stealing is the dramatic thing about him, but he was an all-around ballplayer.”

Brock told Cardinals Magazine, “Being a base stealer was a double whammy. You had to be in shape, along with the rest of your teammates, but you also had to be in base-stealing shape, or you weren’t going to be successful. That was a special challenge, all by itself, that you had to prepare for.”

Brock excelled in the spotlight. He batted .391 (34-for-87) with 16 runs, 14 steals and 13 RBI in 21 World Series games for the Cardinals.

“He was as good as I’ve ever seen rising to the occasion,” Devine said.

United Press International columnist Milton Richmond described Brock as “the thinking man’s ballplayer. He knew almost as much about gravity and motion as Sir Isaac Newton.”

Ted Sizemore, a Dodgers second baseman before joining the Cardinals, had the perspective of observing Brock as an opponent as well as a teammate. Sizemore told Cardinals Magazine, “He slid very late and a lot of times the guys on the club wondered how he didn’t break his ankle sliding so late. Being on the other end of that, I hated tagging him because his knee was always up so high when he came in. You could break your hand putting it in there.”

Keith Hernandez, who joined the Cardinals as a 20-year-old first baseman in 1974, recalled Brock as a Hall of Fame person.

“He helped me more than anybody in my career,” Hernandez said. “He’s one of the guys in my career that if they weren’t around at a certain stage I might not have made it … He was such a giving person.”

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