The Manager Who Tried to Get Rid of Stan Musial
On July 15, 1939, the manager of the Class D Williamson Red Birds in Williamson, West Virginia sat down and wrote to the St. Louis Cardinals about one of his pitchers. The pitcher was 18, left-handed, and at that point in the season had lost only two games. The manager, Harrison Wickel, recommended that the Cardinals release him anyway. In the report as it has since been quoted, he called him "the wildest pitcher I have ever seen," then added, almost as a courtesy, that the kid had good habits, was a fine boy, and could hit a little. Nobody outside the Cardinals' front office read it at the time; four years later, when the wire services were writing the player's...