Starts and Finishes

NHL hockey finally returned this weekend after their five months of hissyfitting. The shortened schedule is conference-only, which means none of the teams will play opponents from the other half of the continent; since there are 15 teams in each conference, that means that at least one team in each conference must be idle on every game day, and the Sabres drew that straw for yesterday's slate of openers.  However, they got their season and home opener televised nationally on NBC today, and they did well- a 5-2 drubbing of the big bad Flyers. Their biggest-money players performed well (Thomas Vanek scoring two goals and barely missing credit and hats for a third which he got one of his three assists on, and Ryan Miller being lights-out in goal except for a couple minutes early in the second), and, just as important, the guys stood up for themselves.

Last season effectively ended in November when a Bruin goon ran Miller in the crease- and nobody on the Sabres came to his defense.  Today, when a Flyer goon took a run at a defenseless Sabre, their assistant captain Drew Stafford, who'd been on the team (but not on the ice) in Boston for that horrid hit last year, dropped the gloves and fought the Flyer bully who did the deed. That sent as much a message as the final score did.

The only downside was that our legendary play-by-play man, new Hockey Hall of Fame inductee Rick Jennaret, came down sick and didn't get to call the first game back on the Sabres' radio broadcast. (The TV would've been pre-empted by the NBC idiots anyway.)  He had to turn over the call to a backup- a guy I like on sports reports, and who did a good job in the pinch.

A day to savor it , and then it's back on the ice in Tonto! tomorrow night. Lots of two-in-two-nighters in this shortened season, but I like what I've seen of the beginning of it.

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Meanwhile, the earlier part of the weekend brought sad news from baseball, as two members of its Hall of Fame passed away, both with Mets and Rochester Red Wings connections.

Longtime Orioles manager Earl Weaver was the first I heard of passing yesterday. He managed the Red Wings, then the O's top affiliate, for two seasons in 1966 and 1967 before moving up to the bigs just in time to lose to the Mets in the 1969 World Series. Both tenures were marked by talented rosters and regular outbursts with players and umpires.  In Silver Seasons, the definitive chronology of Rochester baseball through its Silver Stadium era, the authors recount how two relievers would actively bet on whether Earl would be ejected from that night's game- "Kenny Rowe and I would sit in the bullpen and wager a dinner or a beer on the inning we thought Earl would get tossed."  Weaver's longtime feud with his alltime best pitcher at both levels, Jim Palmer, began on Norton Street. Later, after he was outplayed by the Mets and outsmarted by their manager (and got himself thrown out of a World Series game, the first manager in over 30 years to earn that honor), he came back the following year to lead the O's to their one World Championship of his tenure.  But he was colorful, if nothing else, and his loyalty to his sport is unquestioned.

While I saw him manage many games (at least from my parents' living room), I never saw Stan Musial play. His last season was 1963, four years before I began following the sport. But I knew him as a Red Wing legend, also. The Cardinals had previously been Rochester's longtime parent club (the "Red Wing" name even playing on their put-a-bird-on-it character), and The Man, then as a Boy, or at least a teen, spent 1941 at Silver Stadium, batting .326 and hitting a few homers in 54 games before getting his permanent callup.

Earlier today, my friend Greg Prince (who writes books, which you should buy) wrote about the Mets connection to Stan the Man in his waning years. That first Met season was enough to make Stan's waning turn to wax, and Greg, to wax poetic about it:

Musial enjoyed a career renaissance at age 41 in 1962. That was also the year the Mets were born. It did not seem to be a coincidence. On the verge of retirement after turning 40 following the 1961 season, Stan found himself with incentive to keep playing.

“[T]hey invented the Mets,” wrote Jerry Mitchell in The Amazing Mets. “Stan looked at the pitching staff that had been rounded up for the new club and drooled at the thought of the hits he could get if he stayed on; all thoughts of quitting fled his mind. He went right down in the cellar and began to bone his bats.”

A Cardinal spokesman didn’t hide Musial’s expansion glee, either: “[Stan] said something about how nice it would be if he could play 18 games with the Mets, nine of them at the Polo Grounds, which used to be one of his favorite parks.”

It became even favoriter in 1962, when

The Man was reborn as a kid in his prime: batting .468, slugging .787. The 22-for-47 virtuoso performance, which started with a 3-for-3 on Opening Night in St. Louis and included the first run ever driven in against the Mets, changed the complexion of the National League batting race in 1962. Without his at-bats versus whatever arms the Mets threw at him, Musial was a .314 hitter, plenty solid for a 41-year-old. Mix in what he did to the Mets, the Man was suddenly raking at a .330 clip, third-best in the senior circuit — and incredible, considering his senior status.

Musial eked out one more season in '63 and finally hung it up before Shea Stadium might ruin his Polo Mojo.  But years after that, he produced the story, or possibly the legend, which Greg ended his piece with, and I do, as well:

Seems a friend of a friend was in Cooperstown one induction weekend and, since it was Sunday, attended church services. I think that’s how it goes.

OK, so this friend was coming out of church in Cooperstown, and who should come walking in his direction but the great Stan Musial, all 475 home runs and 3,630 base hits of him? It was an awe-striking moment. You go to the Hall of Fame and you find yourself eye-to-eye with one of its prime residents. You couldn’t pray for an encounter like this, but here it is, right in front of you: Stan Musial, ambling right your way.

What in the name of Marty Marion do you to say to Stan Musial? My friend’s friend went for simplicity:

“Hi Stan!”

Stan’s response? He smiled and he said…

“Hey guy!”

…and he continued on his walk.

The Man, indeed.