Stan Musial, Jack Buck And The Bogeyman - Only In Golf
Stan “The Man” Musial
Golf and I always have endured a contentious relationship, hence the newspaper label I carried for many years - “The Bogeyman.”
It’s especially odd that I became a golf writer during my career, kind of like Barney Fife joining the British Secret Service.
As my cousin often pointed out, the Ol’ Bogeyman was a decent athlete growing up, reasonably good in sports - except golf. That is, as a youth, I didn’t play golf often enough to become good at it. And as I’ve aged, I’ve never been good enough to seek playing more often.
It’s the same relationship I have with laundry.
Put it this way: If soccer is “the beautiful game,” and boxing is “the sweet science,” golf is “the bitter pill to swallow.”
Think about it, a friend rings you up and invites you to play golf, what is he actually asking you to do? “Hey bud, how would you like to spend the next five hours of your life doing something you do quite badly? You know, something that frustrates the living crap out of you and makes you regret the day you were born?
“Whadda ya say?”
Where’s the fun in that, what’s the attraction? I mean, I’m lousy at losing weight. How about we get a pizza, have a few beers and do that instead?
But God works in mysterious ways, and He’s carrying the scorecard, so what are you going to do? You’re going to play awful golf and you’re going to write about it.
Over the years, however, my perspective has changed. I’ve come to realize the game is not just a cost prohibitive, torturously tedious waste of time - although it is those things - but it has a usefulness, an intangible value, a redeeming social property.
No, the Bogeyman has never become a better player, that pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. He still hits fairways the way Columbus hit Asia - when he landed in the Bahamas. He still putts like he’s playing “Marco Polo.” He still loses golf balls like Billy Bob Thornton loses wives. In short, he still stinks.
That aside, I have come to appreciate the game, an essential quality golf has that is unassociated with individual performance. That is, you don’t play golf, you share it. Picture Scrooge playing “20 Questions” at his nephew Fred’s Christmas dinner. It was his participation that counted, not the score … at least to Fred.
Golf is a vehicle, a unifier, a blessing. Golf is one game, under God, indivisible, with duck hooks and three-putts for all.
A hard game to play, damn right. But it plays no favorites. It humbles all, regardless of their station in life or their accomplishments otherwise. At the same time, it can reward you in ways that bear no relationship to par.
Growing up, my sport of choice was baseball. I spent my days immersed in Whiffle balls, baseball cards and board game simulations. I would lie awake at night, dreaming of playing alongside the game’s last great hero - Stan Musial. I would imagine Musial lifting one to the pavilion roof at old Busch Stadium and see myself standing at home plate, a bat on my shoulder and a glad-hand extended to “Baseball’s Perfect Knight” as he crossed the plate and turned toward the dugout.
And I’d hear “Baseball’s Perfect Warbler,” Jack Buck, voicing the call. “Stan the Man has tied the game and left O’Neill with a chance to win it. He wouldn’t hit another one - would he?”
Well, no, he wouldn’t. The chances of young O’Neill ever taking a major league pitcher deep were the same as O’Neill ever taking Brigitte Bardot to Washington University’s Thurtene Carnival. That’s to say, they were nonexistent.
But a kid could dream.
Which brings us back around to the sport of golf where, in terms of exchanging glad hands or hitting another one, dreams are possible, and dreams come true.
Of course, I’ve had many forgettable experiences on a golf course - you don’t get to be the Bogeyman while drawing circles on your card. But I’ve also had one I will cherish forever, one that is indelible. It happened years ago. I was covering baseball in those days, sitting at home on a Wednesday morning when my phone rang. The screen caller ID said “Jack Buck” was on the other end, and I couldn’t wait to find out why.
“Hey kid, how are ya? Whaaaada ya doing tomorrow?” The smooth baritone was impossible to mistake. “How about playing golf with Musial and me?”
There was a pause, as my brain tried to decipher what it just heard, before I offered a thoroughly composed and confident response. “Oh, uh, gee … I, uh … I mean … er, uh …”
Buck bailed me out. “The peg goes in the ground at 9 a.m at the Missouri Bluffs. See ya there.”
Let’s face it, some questions answer themselves.
I showed up some 30 minutes early the next day at the Bluffs. Now, mind you, the Bogeyman never has been big on hitting balls before a round. It’s kind of like sipping a shot of whiskey instead of tossing it back - sends the wrong message. Moreover, in my experience, a good practice range swing never transitions to the golf course. Hitting ‘em well on the range is like catching a fish with your first cast. You’re setting yourself up to fail.
But on this occasion, a little pregame batting practice seemed prudent. Besides, I figured my my distinguished hosts would already be on the range, limbering up. But as 9 o’clock approached, there was still no sign of them. My basket empty, I returned to the pro shop, sweating, aching, laboring, when Buck and Musial came strolling in. They were fresh, relaxed and wreaking of air conditioning.
“Guess you’re all warmed up now, eh?” Buck said, in a wickedly deadpan manner.
I felt silly, but I also felt vindicated. My celebrated playing partners were simply following my own first rule of golf etiquette, i.e. tee time is on time.
“Kindred spirits,” I thought. Things felt more comfortable already.
As did each broadcast from the ballpark back then, our round of golf started with a “Buck At Bat” Show. After all those years of describing Cardinals games - 45 years at that point - Buck was accustomed to setting the scene and laying a foundation for what was about to take place. This was no different.
And as he put a peg in the ground, placed his ball on the tee and gazed down the fairway, that’s exactly what he did.
“One out, a runner on third, got to get him home,” Buck announced for all to hear. And with that, he pulled the cub back and swung away. The drive soared high in the air, not particularly deep, but right down the middle of the fairway. It got the job done - the imaginary runner trotted home without a play.
Next, Musial stepped to the dish, er, the tee. As the southpaw swinger got set, adjusted his feet and straddled the ball, Harry Caray was playing in my head: “Take a look fans, take a good long look … remember his swing, and the stance ... we won’t see his like again.”
Well, until the next tee box. But anyway …
The Man turned into a short backswing, shifted his weight a bit prematurely and ripped a low line drive to left, a similar trajectory to his 3,000th hit at Wrigley Field. “And there it is … there it is.” I thought to myself.
Couldn’t help it, couldn’t get Harry out of my head.
The confines of the 544-yard par-5 No. 1 at Missouri Bluffs are friendly, but not as friendly as Wrigley. On this occasion, Musial’s sinking liner soared into the trees, knocked on a trunk and settled well out of bounds.
“Double to left!” Musial pronounced, with his familiar self-effacing giggle. Musial had the remarkable quality of always being the person in the crowd least impressed with Musial. He loved to cut up, loved to make people laugh, and loved to laugh at himself.
And why not laugh? After all, there are no mulligans in baseball, but when you played with Buck and Musial, there most certainly were in golf. The Man reached in the bag, grabbed another egg and knocked if safely into center field.
Finally, it was my turn. As I nervously prepared to swing the lumber for the first time, the pinch-me nature of the moment sunk in. Here I was, following Musial in the batting order, fulfilling my wildest dreams.
I wouldn’t hit another one, would I?
In this case, unfortunately, yes I would. With a mighty swing, I sent “Mr. Spalding” skyward and watched as the majestic blast hooked away from the fairway, over the treetops and out of sight.
“Adios, goodbye and maybe that’s unfindable,” Buck said, parodying his call of Jack Clark’s home run in Game 6 at Dodger Stadium. As in 1985, the call was right on the mark.
“Go ahead, hit another one, that was just a long foul ball,” Buck insisted.
And so it went for the next couple of hours on a warm summer morning. The jokes kept coming, the camaraderie kept percolating and the good times rolled. I was hanging out with two of my biggest heroes, two baseball giants and lousy golf was the great equalizer. In their game, they were legends. But In this game, all three of us put our pants on one leg at a time … often backwards.
When I finished the third hole by putting out for a double-bogey 6, Buck was quick to add perspective. “Six is a good number when you’re playing with Musial.” Frankly, on this day, there wasn’t a bad number to be had.
Two holes later, the group in front was spending too much time looking for a ball when Musial said, “Let’s just go around these guys and play the next hole.” Sure enough, a group was already standing on the next tee, as well.
Not to be deterred, the Hall of Fame train simply turned around, went back two holes and played the previous ground over again. As the Bogeyman, I knew this strategy well - it’s called course management. It was completely unethical, and it was beautiful, like the three of us had been playing immoral golf together our whole lives!
After hitting another low-flying rope off to the left, Musial explained that he purposefully didn’t golf much during his playing days: “I didn’t want to mess up my swing,” he said.
I commiserated, “Sure, makes sense,” I said. “The golf swing is a fragile thing.”
“No, no,” Musial laughed, “I didn’t want to mess up my baseball swing.”
He then sliced another shot, barely keeping it in play.
“The good news is, my golf swing is still flawless,” Musial added, chuckling more loudly.
Stan Musial, who in 1943 had 701 plate appearances and struck out only 18 times, was making fun of his swing. He went on to explain why he had a fundamental problem making the transition from baseball to golf, why so many of his shots avoided the fairway.
“When I played, the best fielders - the shortstop, the second baseman, the center fielder - were in the middle of the ball field,” Musial said. “So I always stayed away from the middle of the field. I’d go with the pitch - hit the outside pitch to left. I’d pull the inside pitch to right. But I never wanted to hit the ball in the middle.”
“How about that!” I thought to myself. “I have the same problem.” Musial and the Bogeyman, who’d a thunk it?
As the temperature spiked and climbed into the 90s, we all agreed nine innings was enough. As Buck looked over the scorecard and added up the damage, Musial pulled out a napkin and illustrated another joke. By the time the “Donora Greyhound” was finished, I was laughing too hard to even care about the final scores. I already knew it was my personal best.
In the end, all that mattered was that I had been there. Both Stan Musial and Jack Buck are gone now. Buck was 77 when he died in 2002. He was on Cardinals broadcasts from 1954-2001 and was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1987. Musial was 93 when he passed on in 2013. When he retired from baseball in 1963, he held 29 National League records and 17 All-Star Game records.
And for one day many years ago, I was in the same starting lineup with them, making bad swings, telling bad jokes and having the time of my life. On a baseball field, it could have never happened.
In golf, it happens all the time.