St. Louis' 10 Greatest Athletes

Today, the Mets opened the 2018 baseball season at home to the St. Louis Cardinals, winning 9-4.

St. Louis' 10 Greatest Athletes

My metro areas lists won't be like my lists for the States: While it is possible for someone to qualify on both lists, this is about players who played for local teams, not necessarily athletes who grew up there. In other words, great players in individual sports like boxing or tennis or track are out.

Honorable Mention to members of the Baseball Hall of Fame not otherwise in the Top 10: From the Cardinals, 1st basemen Charles Comiskey, Jake Beckley, Jim Bottomley, Johnny Mize and Orlando Cepeda; 2nd basemen Frankie Frisch and Red Schoendienst shortstop Ozzie Smith; left fielders Chick Hafey and Joe Medwick; and pitchers Grover Cleveland Alexander, Jessie Haines, Burleigh Grimes, Dizzy Dean, Steve Carlton and Bruce Sutter. (Ol' Diz was an all-time great, but an injury kept him from being great long enough to make the Top 10.

And from the Browns, shortstop Bobby Wallace, left fielder Goose Goslin, catcher Rick Ferrell, and pitcher Satchel Paige.

Honorable Mention to members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame not otherwise in the Top 10: From the Cardinals, tight end Jackie Smith, cornerback Roger Wehrli, and offensive tackle Dan Dierdorf; and from the Rams, offensive tackle Orlando Pace.


Left back Joe Maca played for Brooklyn Hispano. Center forward Joe Gaetjens played for Brookhattan. Left half Walter Bahr, the last survivor, and midfielder Ed McIlvenny were playing for Philadelphia Nationals. Inside left John Souza and outside left Ed Souza played for Fall River Delponta Delgada in Massachusetts.


He finished his career with 12,280 rushing yards and an even 100 rushing touchdowns; and 767 catches for 6,875 yards and 36 touchdowns. The Indianapolis Colts, with whom he started, named him to their Ring of Honor. San Diego State and the Rams both retired Number 28 for him. He was elected to both the College and the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In 2010, the NFL Network listed him 70th on their list of the NFL's 100 Greatest Players.

His cousin Kevin Faulk was also a star running back, and helped the Patriots win 3 Super Bowls, including beating the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI.

8. Rogers Hornsby, 2nd base, St. Louis Cardinals, 1915-26 and 1933; and St. Louis Browns, 1933-37. He would rank a bit higher on this list had he stayed in St. Louis for his entire career, but he was traded away from the Cardinals -- despite being their best hitter and their manager of their 1st World Series-winning team -- because he was a rotten guy. This included being a racist and a compulsive gambler.

He also might have been the greatest righthanded pure hitter who ever lived. His .358 lifetime batting average is a record for righthanders. He batted .402 over a 5-year stretch from 1922 to 1926, including .424 in 1924, the highest in Major League Baseball since 1894.

He won 7 National League batting titles, 2 home run titles, 4 RBI titles, and all 3, the Triple Crown, in 1922 and 1925. He was named NL Most Valuable Player in 1925 and 1929. He collected 2,930 hits, and had 301 home runs. That doesn't sound like much now, but when he played his last game in 1937, only Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx had more. In addition to his 1926 World Championship with the Cardinals, he also won Pennants with the Chicago Cubs in 1929 and 1932.

But he went on to make 2 troubling discoveries: He was respected, but hated, and teams couldn't wait to get rid of him, his ego, and his private troubles; and he was a far better manager with himself as a player than without, frequently frustrated when his players weren't very good, let alone as good as he was.

He was named to the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. When The Sporting News named its 100 Greatest Baseball Players in 1999, Hornsby came in 9th, the highest-ranked 2nd baseman.

The Cardinals named him to their team Hall of Fame, and dedicated a statue to him outside Busch Stadium. While uniform numbers began to be used during his career, he never wore the same number long enough to be identified with it, so a Cardinal "STL" logo stands in for a retired number along with their other honorees.

7. Brett Hull, right wing, St. Louis Blues, 1988-98. Picking a player for the Blues is difficult, because most of their better players also spent significant time with other teams, including Hull, Al MacInnis, Chris Pronger and Keith Tkachuk. But Hull is the only one with a statue outside their arena. He scored 741 goals in his NHL career, 527 of them with the Blues.

6. Bob Pettit, forward, St. Louis Hawks, 1955-65. He was an 11-time NBA All-Star, a 2-time NBA MVP, and the 1st NBA player to score 20,000 points. (This wouldn't be a big deal today. It was a huge deal then, in 1965.) He won the 1958 NBA Championship with the Hawks. After they moved to Atlanta, they retired his Number 9. He was named to the Basketball Hall of Fame and the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players.


"Gorgeous George" -- or "the Sizzler" -- had a .340 lifetime batting average, including American League batting titles in 1920 and 1922. In 1922, he nearly led the Browns to the Pennant, falling 1 game short of the Yankees. He collected 257 hits, a major league record that stood until Ichiro Suzuki got 262 in 2004. For his career, he had 2,812 hits, and he might be much better remembered had he gotten the remaining 188 to get to 3,000.

He also led the AL in stolen bases 4 times, and for decades was regarded as the best-fielding 1st baseman in the game's history. When the Baseball Hall of Fame opened in 1939, there were 25 inductees, 12 of whom were still alive, and 11 of them attended the opening ceremony -- all but Ty Cobb, who got held up getting there and just missed it. Sisler was the last survivor of those 12, living until 1973.

Many people forgot him, but The Sporting News didn't, ranking him 33rd on their list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players in 1999. When the current Busch Stadium opened in 2006, a statue of Sisler was placed outside, even though he never played for the Cardinals.

(The Browns became the Baltimore Orioles in 1954, but they have not honored him in any way. And since his last season in the majors was 1930, the last year before every team adopted uniform numbers, there is no number to retire for him, which is another reason why he's not as well remembered as, say, Cobb or Ruth.)

He had 3 sons involved with professional baseball, including Dick Sisler, whose home run on the last day of the 1950 regular season gave the Philadelphia Phillies the National League Pennant over the Brooklyn Dodgers -- whose team president, fellow University of Michigan graduate Branch Rickey, had signed him as a scout. George said, "I felt awful and terrific at the same time."

4. Albert Pujols, 1st base, St. Louis Cardinals, 2001-11. In 11 seasons with the Cards, Phat Albert made 10 All-Star teams. He also drove in at least 100 runs every season until 2011, when he had 99. He batted .328 with the Cardinals, with a 170 OPS+, 455 doubles, and 445 home runs. With all of that, and his being a 1st baseman, he was frequently compared with Stan Musial, a.k.a. Stan the Man, even getting the same nickname, "El Hombre."

His subsequent tenure with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim hasn't been as successful, but he goes into the 2018 season with 614 home runs, more than any player has ever hit honestly except Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays and Ken Griffey Jr. (Jim Thome finished with 612.) By the year 2027, expect to see him in the Hall and to see his Number 5 retired at Busch Stadium.

3. Lou Brock, left field, St. Louis Cardinals, 1964-79. He led Southern University of Baton Rouge, Louisiana to the 1959 NAIA Championship (national championship for small schools). Based on this, and on his major league achievements, he was elected to the College Baseball Hall of Fame.

An 8-time MLB All-Star, he collected over 3,000 hits, and set records (which still stand, at least within the National League) for stolen bases in a season and a career. He led the St. Louis Cardinals to the 1964 (won), 1967 (won) and 1968 (lost) World Series. In 1967, he won the Babe Ruth Award, 1 of the 2 awards given to the Most Valuable Player of the World Series. (Bob Gibson got the better-known award, the Sport Magazine Award.)

The Cardinals retired his Number 20. He was named to the Baseball Hall of Fame and The Sporting News' 100 Greatest Baseball Players.

2. Bob Gibson, pitcher, St. Louis Cardinals, 1959-75. Like Wilt Chamberlain, he played college basketball, in his case for Omaha's Creighton University. Also like Wilt, he played for the Harlem Globetrotters. Unlike Wilt, he couldn't stand the clowning, and wanted to play serious sports only. And since baseball paid more than basketball at that point, he chose baseball. And when Bob Gibson played baseball, it was a serious sport.

He didn't regret his choice of sports, but many men did. More so than even Don Drysdale, he was considered the meanest pitcher of his generation. He once said, "I didn't throw at a lot of guys, but when I did, I made sure I hit them." He also presaged Charles Barkley with this remark: "Why do I have to be a role model for your kid? You be a role model for your kid."

Along with Brock and Ken Boyer, he helped the St. Louis Cardinals win the 1964 and (with the additions of Orlando Cepeda and Roger Maris) 1967 World Series, and was named the Series MVP both times. In Game 1 in 1968, he set a Series record with 17 strikeouts. He seemed unbeatable, having already won Game 7 in both 1964 and 1967, but the Detroit Tigers got to him in Game 7 in 1968.

That 1968 season saw him put together the lowest earned-run average of the post-1920 Lively Ball Era, 1.12. For his career, he was 251-714, with 3,117 strikeouts, making him the 1st National League pitcher to fan 3,000. He made 9 All-Star Games, won 2 Cy Young Awards (1968 and 1970), and won 9 Gold Gloves. He also pitched a no-hitter in 1971.

He was named to the Baseball Hall of Fame, The Sporting News' 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. The Cardinals elected him to their team Hall of Fame, retired his Number 45, and erected a statue of him outside Busch Stadium.

Do you want to tell Gibson he's not the greatest athlete ever to play for a St. Louis sports team? Neither do I. But he respects the history of the game, and of the Cardinals in particular, to accept that, in St. Louis, only Stan was truly The Man.

1. Stan Musial, left field, St. Louis Cardinals, 1941-63. Like Sisler and Babe Ruth, he was a lefthander who started as a pitcher. Like Ruth, but also played the outfield. Unlike Sisler and Ruth, his pitching career ended when he landed on his shoulder while making a great catch in the minor leagues. So he became a full-time outfielder -- and, along with Hornsby and Hank Aaron, a candidate for the title of greatest hitter in National League History.
Ted Williams, Stan's contemporary, always said he wanted people to think of him as the greatest hitter who ever lived. If there's one thing Ted liked more than hitting, it was talking about hitting. Once, he went on and on about Stan, until his son, John Henry Williams, asked if he thought Stan was as good a hitter as he was, and Ted said, "Yes, I do." That says it all; the rest is details.

Here's some of the details. He shares with Aaron and Willie Mays the record of 24 All-Star Game appearances. (There were 2 ASGs every year from 1958 to 1962, so he appeared in them in the last 20 of his 22 MLB seasons.) He had a career batting average of .331. Someone once asked him why he was always smiling, and he said, "If you had a lifetime batting average of .331, you'd be smiling, too!" He won 7 batting titles. His OPS+ was a whopping 159, meaning he was 59 percent better at producing runs than the average player of his time.

He was the 1st man to collect his 3,000th career hit on television, in 1958. He finished with 3,630 hits -- exactly 1,815 at home and 1,815 on the road. He hit 725 doubles, 3rd all-time behind Tris Speaker and Pete Rose -- and Stan's last hit, in 1963, went under the glove of Rose, then a rookie 2nd baseman for the Cincinnati Reds.

He hit 475 home runs, more than any National Leaguer before him except Mel Ott. He had 1,951 RBIs, more than any NLer before him and still 7th all-time, including 10 100+ seasons. He finished with more extra-base hits (1,377) and more total bases (6,134) than any other player (with both records having been broken by Aaron).

He won 4 Pennants with the Cardinals, winning the World Series in 1942, 1944 and 1946, and losing it in 1943. He won 3 NL MVP awards, in 1943, 1946 and 1948 -- in this last, missing the Triple Crown by 1 home run -- and finished 2nd 4 other times, including 1957, when he won his last batting title, and Sports Illustrated named him Sportsman of the Year.

He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his 1st year of eligibility. In 1999, The Sporting News listed him 10th on their list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and fan balloting put him on the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.

Reflecting his service to his adopted hometown, and to his country, serving in the U.S. Navy in World War II in 1945 -- the only year between 1942 and 1946 that the Cardinals didn't win the Pennant -- a new bridge for Interstate 70 over the Mississippi River, which opened just after his death in 2013, was named the Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge, and is nicknamed the Stan Span.

The Cardinals retired his Number 6, and dedicated a statue to him outside Busch Stadium, having since moved it to the new ballpark with that name. On its base is a quote from the Commissioner at the time, Ford Frick: "Here stands baseball's perfect warrior. Here stands baseball's perfect knight."