Paul Waner, one of the finest hitters the game ever knew:
"A good hitter doesn't permit his wrists to break. He lets them roll with the swing. No one can actually get much power from his wrists."
-Baseball Digest, April 1959
WANER'S FURIOUS STRETCH DRIVE
Ranking 32nd With .318 Near Midseason, He Won Title With .362
"Sitting across from each other in the St. Louis Cardinal clubhouse this spring were two of the greatest hitters in history, Paul Waner and Stan Musial.
Musial, in the autumn of a brilliant 18-season career, turned to a visitor and said:
'One could say you were looking at a couple of fellows who have over 6,000 hits between them.'
Waner, now a Cardinal batting coach, grinned and nodded. The former Pirate and Hall of Famer was stripped down to his shorts and baseball socks. The frame of his emaciated body, recently ravaged by an attack of tuberculosis, was accentuated by thin, bony arms and legs.
One who didn't know him would never know or guess that here sat one of the most skillful hitters the game has ever known.
'You're not far from passing me in hits, are you, Stan?' Waner asked.
'I don't really know,' Musial said. 'I'm not sure, but I think I have 3,116.'
'I don't even know how many I wound up with,' Paul added.
A statistically-minded reporter supplied the information. He said the figure was 3,152.
'That would leave you only 35 away from me,' Waner told Musial. 'It shouldn't take you long to get that many. I hope you go on to make a thousand more.'
'Thanks' Stan said. 'At my age getting those 35 is going to be hard.'
They both laughed at this.
Between them, someone said, Waner and Musial had made 6,268 hits. 'That's a lot of bingles,' whistled a Cardinal rookie.
'You wouldn't believe this,' Paul told his listeners, by now almost a dozen players and writers, 'but there was a time when I was playing when I got tired making so many hits.'
Everybody laughed at this. 'You mean there was ever a ball player who didn't like his base hits?' asked a credulous scribe.
'That's right,' Waner replied. 'I was getting so many 'three for four' and 'four for five' days one season I got tired of it.'
'The guy must be nuts,' a rookie whispered.
'I'd like to be as nuts and as great a hitter as he was,' said another.
'I only got tired of making a lot of hits one year,' Waner admitted with a laugh. 'The first time I went into a prolonged slump, I got over the idea in a hurry.'
Paul was all wound up conversationally by now. 'Then there was that year, 1934 I think, when I was hitting only about .318 at the end of June.
'You remember that, Stan? You were in the league for a couple of years then, weren't you, Old Man?'
Musial laughed and said he was about 13 years back in 1934.
'Anyway,' Paul continued, 'there I was hitting .318 and the rest of the Pirates were kidding me about 31 other players hitting better than that in the league.
'They burned me up with the ribbing, so one day I told 'em I'm taking all bets that I'm catching the field before the season ended. I must have made about $500 in bets.
'By Labor Day, only Ducky Medwick was ahead of me by three points. That day he went one-for-ten and I got seven-for-nine. It was a breeze after that. I think I won the title with a .362 mark.' (Editor's note: He did.)
'How about the money?' someone asked.
'I never collected a cent of it,' Waner laughed.
'I think I'll go out and do a little running in the outfield,' Musial said to break up the party.
'Take it easy, Old Man,' Waner kidded. 'You're not as young as you used to be.' "
-Al Abrams, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Baseball Digest, May 1959)
COULDN'T SEE HIM
"Paul Waner possessed extraordinary eyesight as well as remarkably supple wrists. For Pittsburghers, he and Honus Wagner will never be replaced as the greatest hitters of all time.
Chet Smith, sports editor of the Pittsburgh Press, remembers the day when a Brooklyn Dodger rookie southpaw named Harry Eisenstat came into the game and the left-handed Waner tripled on the first pitch.
'I don't mind the triple,' Eisenstat complained in the clubhouse, 'but he didn't have to insult me.'
His listeners asked exactly what he meant.
'Well, he never looked at me once going up to the plate, or even standing there. He didn't even know I was a left-hander. I thought he was asleep until the ball got right to the plate. Then his eyes popped open and that rifle shot.' "
-Fred Russell, Nashville Banner (Baseball Digest, September 1959)
No comments:
Post a Comment