Two of the greatest.

I never watched Musial play but was a huge fan of the Orioles in their salad days.  I read Weaver's books, too, about his philosophies (pitching, defense, and the 3-run homer) and how the Orioles organization paid so much attention to detail at all levels (the Oriole Way).

One of the more interesting Oriole players in the late 70s was reliever Tim Stoddard, the only man who has won both an NCAA Basketball Championship (he started on the 1974 NC State team) and a MLB World Series.  Weaver called him "Full Pack" because Earl said needed to smoke a whole pack of cigarettes every time Stoddard pitched.

Characters like Weaver make baseball fun.  I'm glad he lived to see his statue go up in front of Camden Yards.

really sad to hear this,two baseball greats gone on the same day.i can still see earl weaver chewing some ump's as$ up and down.he never got cheated outta letting his feelings be known.

Musial is easily one of the top 10 best players of all time. Extremely underrated. If he was a Yankee, he would be mentioned with guys like Babe Ruth.

One thing about Stan the Man that you guys may not know......his grandson is a Vandy grad and was a friend of mine . I met Stan my soph year and besides being a great baseball player, he was a prince of a man. RIP Stan.....you will be missed,

cjdore wrote: One thing about Stan the Man that you guys may not know......his grandson is a Vandy grad and was a friend of mine . I met Stan my soph year and besides being a great baseball player, he was a prince of a man. RIP Stan.....you will be missed,

that's awesome. i didn't know that his grandson is a Vandy grad.

One of the guys I played baseball with when I was young, before VU, got drafted and played for the St. Louis Cardinals and Stan was his hitting coach.  He had a lot of very nice things to say about Stan, said he was the nicest guy you'd ever want to know.

Those Oriole teams of the late 60's and 70's were great.  In '71 he had four 20 game winners on the same team.  These days, even with longer schedules, it's not unusual to have four or fewer 20 game winners in the whole league.  

From the Wall Street Journal:  "He liked to use four starting pitchers instead of the currently fashionable five. Why not give the maximum number of innings to your best? The 1971 Orioles had four 20-game winners, a feat accomplished only one other time in baseball history by the 1920 White Sox. At spring training in 1975, he was one of the first managers to use radar guns. Weaver loved to lose his games by lopsided scores. He bet disgust would energize his teams."

That second to last line, "loved to lose his games by lopsided scores" could be also said of a long line of our football coaches...a distinction that I'm glad that we've put behind us with the new administration and football coaching staff.