Musial looks back on his time in Donora

Some time ago, a column in the Mon Valley Independent featured letters Stan Musial wrote back home, mainly from 1939-1946, to Joe Barbao. During that span, Musial was making sure to keep in touch with his roots and with his friend who was instrumental in helping him when he was still Stan the boy, not yet The Man.

His friend Ken Barbao, who passed away at the age of 90 in 2022, once shared something his father had told him about observing Musial, believing that he had the potential to become a very good ballplayer.

“That’s the reason he took so much interest in him,” said Ken.

An expanded story of the Musial-Barbao correspondence recently ran in Cardinals Gameday Magazine, a publication Musial’s son Dick reads. Pleased with the story, Dick, who spent some of his earliest years in Donora, shot off an email to Mark Pawelec and Brian Charlton at the Donora Historical Society. They were the men who made the letters available after they had been donated.

In his response, Dick Musial, whose three sisters (Gerry, Janet, and Jeanie) all visited Donora when a state historical marker honoring Stan was unveiled, shared some memories of Donora.

“I think I am the only sibling to remember Donora,” Musial said. I was six and Gerry was two when Mom and Dad rented a home in St. Louis in ’46.”

That move was the start of the Musials leaving Donora, but the son stated he was

MUSIAL • B2

Wayne Stewart / For MVI Sports happy to say he started in Donora.

“I went to the Allen School and attended the Byzantine Church with my mom’s parents. Donora was a hard working town, an American success story until the steelmill strike. All of my cousins left — that happened in most steel towns back then. I have nice memories of my younger days there,” he said.

When he moved to the St. Louis area and attended Cardinals’ games, like so many typical young people, he wasn’t always attentive, not even to his father’s brilliant play on the diamond.

In those days, Harry Caray was one of the Cards’ broadcasters.

“Skip Caray and I used to play catch in the concession area in old Sportsman’s Park while our fathers worked,” he recalled.

Musial was also a collector of baseball cards.

“I had a small trunkful, as they would send Dad a box of them when he homered. We flipped them and attached them to our bicycles to rub against the spokes for noise.

“Years later when we had children of our own and money was tight, and when baseball cards became valuable, I asked Mom where my trunk of cards was located. ‘I threw them away a long time ago.’ Me and three million other baseball card collectors. Probably $250,000 gone.”

When Dick was a high school running back for St. Louis Christian Brothers, he once scored three touchdowns in a key game. He was even named to one organization’s All-American team. He was instrumental in his team going undefeated in 1956. He was once clocked in the 100-yard dash at a sizzling 10.3 seconds Stan Musial was so durable and so outstanding, he was still playing in 1962 at the age of 41 (hitting .330) when a 22-year-old rookie named Mike Shannon joined the Cardinals.

What’s remarkable about that is Shannon was the quarterback on the same high school football team as his son.

Shannon related a story about opponents’ desire to single out Dick because of who he was. Near the start of one game, the opponents were shouting, “Give the ball to Musial,” and “We want a piece of Musial.”

After the next snap, just seconds later, Musial galloped into the end zone. Shannon looked at the players who were still near the line of scrimmage and taunted them, sneering, “You still want me to give the ball to Musial?”

Musial remembered such incidents.

“They would target me at times. One guy kicked me and bruised my liver. Most of the time it didn’t matter who I was, thank God,” he said.

There are some misconceptions about Dick’s athletic career.

One source stated that his father felt that Dick might be just a bit too small for college football, and some sources say the Musials refused a Notre Dame football scholarship.

Dick refuted that.

“I realized after weeks of practice that I didn’t want to be a ‘Rudy,’” he said. “So, I did track. I had full athletic rides to smaller schools, but Dad wanted me to go to Notre Dame. Back then you did what your father told you to do.”