RetroSimba

(Updated Feb. 27, 2022)

On weekdays, Ted Simmons was just another University of Michigan student. On weekends, he was a member of the National League champions.

Simmons, the switch-hitting catcher, made his major-league debut with the Cardinals in September 1968.

After an outstanding season at Class A Modesto of the California League, Simmons was promoted to the Cardinals on Sept. 6, 1968.

A year earlier, the Cardinals selected Simmons in the first round of the amateur draft. Simmons signed for $50,000, played 53 games in the low minors and enrolled at the University of Michigan as a physical education and speech major, beginning classes in the fall of 1967.

In 1968, Simmons was assigned to Modesto, whose manager was Joe Cunningham, a former Cardinals first baseman. In 136 games for Modesto, Simmons had 163 hits, including 30 doubles and 28 home runs, and batted .331 with 117 RBI.

In his Hall of Fame induction speech, Simmons said, “Joe Cunningham, my manager at the A level, was the first major-league hitter to tell me that I would become one myself. I believed him because he had been one himself.”

Simmons was named winner of both the California League’s Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year awards.

Exceeding expectations

In the book “The Ted Simmons Story,” author Jim Brosnan, the former Cardinals pitcher, wrote, “Ted had set some goals for that (1968) season … He had outlined those goals to his girlfriend, an art major.”

Simmons’ goals were to hit 20 home runs with 80 RBI and bat .300 for Modesto.

“Simmons’ girl drew up a fancy chart to remind him of what he was trying to achieve and how well he was doing game by game,” Brosnan wrote. “Simmons hung the chart on the wall of his Modesto apartment, kept it up to date each night and eventually exceeded even his best expectation.”

When Simmons was called up to St. Louis, the Cardinals announced he would be with the club only on weekends because he was attending classes at the University of Michigan during the week.

Nine days after his promotion to the big leagues, Simmons, 19, was in the Cardinals’ clubhouse, participating in a wild pennant-clinching celebration at Houston on Sunday, Sept. 15. Simmons, who still hadn’t appeared in a game, and broadcasters Harry Caray and Jack Buck were among those who had their shirts ripped open in the rowdy fun, The Sporting News reported.

“Mike Shannon was telling me how great it was going to be to have a day off in San Francisco so the team could (continue to) celebrate,” Simmons recalled to Cardinals Magazine. “I told him I wasn’t going because I had class the next day. He said, ‘You’re crazy.’ I said, ‘That may be, but that’s what I’m going to do.’ ”

Back to school

When the party ended, Simmons returned to Ann Arbor, Mich., arriving at midnight, and the Cardinals continued their road trip to San Francisco.

In a 1978 interview with Sport magazine, Simmons recalled the atmosphere on the University of Michigan campus, with calls for social change and an end to the war in Vietnam.

“My first reaction was, ‘Don’t bother me with that stuff. I just want to play ball.’ But quickly I looked around and realized what was going on,” Simmons said. “All of a sudden, a new world opened up to me. It was then that I started to develop as a human being and as someone who tried to function in this world rather than someone who just tried to hit the slider.”

Simmons told Cardinals Magazine, “Walking across campus, you would see every kind of protest there was. Civil rights were just going crazy, and you were seeing this everywhere. It forced you to open your eyes and start thinking about what’s happening around you.”

Simmons rejoined the Cardinals in time for their Saturday, Sept. 21, game at Dodger Stadium. Cardinals manager Red Schoendienst put the rookie in the lineup that day as the starting catcher, batting seventh.

In his first big-league at-bat, facing left-hander Claude Osteen, Simmons struck out in the second inning.

He singled to right in the fifth for his first hit. The Dodgers’ first baseman was Ken Boyer, the former Cardinals third baseman. Simmons told Stan McNeal of Cardinals Gameday Magazine, “When I got to first, he turned to me and asked, ‘That your first hit, rookie?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘I hope it’s the first of 2,500.’ ”

(Simmons would achieve 2,472 hits in his major-league career.)

In his final plate appearance of his debut game, Simmons walked in the eighth.

Catching Larry Jaster and Wayne Granger, Simmons had three putouts and an assist. The Dodgers, who had 11 hits and two walks in a 3-0 victory, didn’t attempt a steal. Boxscore

Simmons played in one more game for the 1968 Cardinals. In their season finale, on Sunday, Sept. 29, at St. Louis, Simmons replaced Tim McCarver in the eighth inning of a rout of the Astros. He grounded out to third in his only at-bat.

After the season, when the Cardinals players met to determine how to dispense with their bonus money for reaching the World Series, Simmons was awarded a share: $250.

Twenty-eight years later, in 1996, Simmons earned his degree from the University of Michigan. He said he wears his graduation ring to honor the achievement and to honor his late mother, Bonnie.

“I was the only one of four children to get a college education because we couldn’t afford for the others to go,” Simmons told Cardinals Gameday Magazine. “It was big for me, but bigger than life for my mom.”

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In 1968, seven years after he broke Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record, Roger Maris hit the last homer of his career. He did it as a Cardinal on the afternoon St. Louis clinched its second consecutive National League pennant.

By then, Maris no longer was the slugger who had hit 61 home runs for the 1961 Yankees. Injury-plagued, he was tired of baseball and instead was looking forward to running an Anheuser-Busch distributorship in Florida.

Maris, 34, also was hampered by a right hand weakened by playing most of the 1965 season with a broken hamate bone. Without hand strength, Maris lacked a consistent power stroke, especially on fastballs. His home run production steadily decreased, dropping from 13 in 1966 to nine in 1967.

When Maris homered off a Don Wilson off-speed pitch on Sept. 15, 1968, at the Astrodome, it brought his season total to five. It was Maris’ first home run since July and the last of 275 over 12 big-league seasons. Boxscore

All five of the right fielder’s 1968 home runs were hit on the road. Three came against the Niekro brothers, Joe of the Cubs and Phil of the Braves.

Last hurrah

After Maris hit a two-run, third-inning homer off Phil Niekro on June 10, 1968, he removed himself from the game because of a bruised heel. After the all-star break, Maris improved and hit .359 (14-for-39) in July. On Aug. 5, Maris announced he would retire after the season.

A month later, when the Cardinals played the Mets for the last time that season in New York, where Maris had spent seven tumultuous years with the Yankees, the Shea Stadium scoreboard flashed this message in the third inning:

“To Roger Maris, making his last New York appearance as an active player today, we express our appreciation of an outstanding career and wish you and yours the best.”

Maris, who sat out that game, took quiet delight in hitting a double and two singles the previous night against the Mets in his New York finale. Boxscore

In the first two games of the Cardinals-Astros series at Houston Sept. 13-15, Maris went hitless in nine at-bats. After he popped out to the catcher in the Sept. 14 game, Maris “banged his bat hard against the roof of the dugout,” The Sporting News reported.

In his first at-bat against Wilson on Sept. 15, Maris struck out, extending his hitless skid to 10 in the series.

When he came up against Wilson in the third, with Curt Flood on first and one out, Maris launched a two-run home run, lifting the Cardinals to a 3-2 lead and sparking them to a 7-4 pennant-clinching victory. His last home run also was the only one he hit at the Astrodome.

Comfortable as Cardinal

On Sept. 29, the Cardinals honored Maris in ceremonies before the final game of the regular season at St. Louis’ Busch Stadium II.

After receiving a standing ovation from the crowd of 23,792, Maris said, “I want to thank the Cardinals for two of my most enjoyable years in baseball and I want to thank all the fans for accepting me the way they did.”

Maris, acquired by the Cardinals in a December 1966 trade with the Yankees, hit 14 home runs in his two seasons with St. Louis. Here is a look at those:

1967

1. May 9, solo HR vs. Woodie Fryman, at Pittsburgh.

2. May 21, solo HR vs. Don Cardwell, at New York.

3. June 10, 3-run HR vs. Dodgers’ Bob Miller, at St. Louis.

4. June 11, solo HR vs. Dodgers’ Ron Perranoski, at St. Louis.

5. June 23, solo HR vs. Phillies’ Rick Wise, at St. Louis.

6. July 16, solo HR vs. Mets’ Dick Selma, at St. Louis.

7. July 18, solo HR vs. Jim Maloney, at Cincinnati.

8. July 29, solo HR vs. Cecil Upshaw, at Atlanta.

9. Sept. 7, 2-run HR vs. Cal Koonce, at New York.

NOTE: Maris hit a solo homer off Jim Lonborg of the Red Sox in Game 5 of the 1967 World Series.

1968

1. April 14, 3-run HR vs. Joe Niekro, at Chicago.

2. April 14, solo HR vs. Joe Niekro, at Chicago.

3. June 10, 2-run HR vs. Phil Niekro, at Atlanta.

4. July 26, 2-run HR vs. Steve Blass, at Pittsburgh.

5. Sept. 15, 2-run HR vs. Don Wilson, at Houston.

Previously: Slider was key to 15 wins in a row for Bob Gibson in 1968

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(Updated Sept. 13, 2025)

On the first swing of his first at-bat as a grandfather, Stan Musial had fans and teammates shouting, “Oh, baby!”

A few hours after his first grandchild was born, Musial, 42, hit the first pitch he saw from Cubs starter Glen Hobbie for a two-run home run atop the pavilion roof in right field at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.

Sharon Musial, wife of Stan’s son, Dick, gave birth to a son, Jeffrey, on Sept. 10, 1963, at Fort Riley Kan., where Dick, 23, was stationed as an Army lieutenant.

Musial and his wife, Lil, had waited until 1:30 a.m. on Sept. 10 before heading to bed. In his book “Stan Musial: The Man’s Own Story,” Musial said, “Lil and I awakened with a start at exactly the same time _ 4:40 a.m. _ and got up, troubled. As she brewed coffee, I paced the floor. Suddenly, the phone rang. Son Dick was calling from Fort Riley, Kan. Sharon had given birth to a boy. When? Just two minutes after Lil and I woke up.”

In a story headlined “Grandpa Musial Shuffles to Plate _ Celebrates by Swatting Homer,” The Sporting News reported, “The Man took a nap later in the morning so he could be better rested for the night game coming up.”

When he arrived at the ballpark, Musial said, he handed out cigars in the clubhouse. The Cardinals were honoring former St. Louis-area major leaguers that night and the old-timers gave Musial a ribbing.

“Hey, Gramp, you belong with us,” retired outfielders Joe Medwick and Terry Moore said to Musial.

With a laugh, Musial replied, “Next year.”

Musial, batting third and playing left field, came up in the first inning with Dick Groat on first and one out. He hit Hobbie’s first pitch for his 11th home run of the season and 474th of his 22-year big-league career. The homer came fewer than 16 hours after the grandchild was born.

“The remarkable Stan Musial set another major league record: Most home runs by a new grandfather, 1,” the Associated Press reported.

Said Musial: “That one was for Jeffrey Stanton Musial.”

In the book “Few and Chosen,” Cardinals catcher Tim McCarver said Musial “probably was the greatest low-ball hitter ever. Even in his 40s, there was no more devastating a low-ball hitter than Stan. Throw him a pitch down in the strike zone, even below the zone, and he would leave his feet.”

Musial’s home run overshadowed the performance that night of Bob Gibson, who hit a three-run homer off Hobbie and pitched a shutout in the Cardinals’ 8-0 victory, their 13th win in 14 games. Boxscore

Gibson and Musial were two of six future Hall of Fame members who played in the game. The Cubs started the other four: right fielder Lou Brock, left fielder Billy Williams, third baseman Ron Santo and first baseman Ernie Banks.

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