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"Stop Falling Hair?" They are a hard bunch to live with when they lose. Last month, after losing a tough game in Philadelphia, a couple of Cardinals made the mistake of singing Moonlight and Roses while the team was riding the bus to the station. Said Eddie Dyer sharply: "If you've got to sing, wait until I get off this bus. I don't see anything to sing about." Things were different after they had taken a game from Cincinnati and learned that Brooklyn had blown one to Boston. They gave Doc Weaver, the club trainer, a rousing cheer for being the last man to board the bus. "Know what will stop falling hair?" someone asked. "No, what?" said Doc, and the whole bus howled when he got the answer: "The floor." Everything seemed funny.
Among their other antics, the old Gas-housers had their famed Mudcat Band, whose incidental effect was to disturb the sleep of hotel guests. Eddie Dyer's Cardinals have no band, but they like music. A phonograph continually grinds out cowboy dirges, swing and sometimes bebop in the clubhouse when they are in St. Louis. It is the successor of an old hand-winding Gramophone that Doc Weaver brought into the clubhouse 22 years ago. The music box helped them win the 1942 pennant, with Pass the Biscuits, Mirandy the theme song. In 1946, in another hot pennant race, Doc Weaver scoured record shops until he found another record of Mirandy—and the Cardinals kept it spinning while they tied Brooklyn for the pennant, beat them in a playoff and won the World Series.*
This season, the Cardinals haven't gotten together on one song. Freckle-faced Infielder Red Schoendienst, Musial's roommate and constant companion, is soothed by Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life and Indian Love Call. Musial is a boogie-woogie bug. Pitcher Pollet likes Brahms and Beethoven, never hears either in the clubhouse. North Carolina-born Pitcher
Max Lanier likes guitar tunes with mournful titles such as I Pass the Graveyard at Midnight and There's a Chill on the Hill Tonight. Says Max: "If I could hear my music while I'm pitching, the bastards would never get a loud foul off me."
Little Left-Hander. It is now a matter of deep mortification in Pittsburgh that Stan Musial originally dreamed of being a Pirate. Unfortunately for Pittsburgh, the Pirates never dreamed of Stan Musial until it was too late. Stan was born in Donora, Pa. (about 25 miles southeast of Pittsburgh), where his father, Lukasz Musial, a Polish immigrant, worked at the zinc mill to support a wife and six kids.
The Musial residence was,a lackluster frame house two doors from the home of Joe Barbao, a semi-pro pitcher who worked nights in the zinc mill. Joe played catch with the kid he called "the little left-hander," taught him how to hold a ball to throw a curve. It was Stan Musial's ambition to be another Lefty Grove.