On August 7, 1959, tied 1-1 in the bottom of the ninth at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Stan "The Man" Musial beat the Phillies with one swing of the bat, as he belted a two run walk off shot to give the Birds a 3-1 victory. The two-run shot was set up by a leadoff walk by Joe Cunningham, then moments later Ruben Gomez served up a 2-1 pitch to The Man who gave it a long ride to victory. This was the 10th of 12 walk off shots for Musial, who had also hit one in May of that same season. 1959 was not the best year in the career of the legendary slugger with the corkscrew stance. it was said that at 38 years of age, he tried to back off a bit in Spring Training, which led to a slow start, and an overall mediocre season, as he hit just .255 with 14 home runs. While some might have thought his career was at the finish line, there was still a ways to go. He hit .275 the next season, and followed it up with a .288 campaign. There are many numbers from the career of Musial that I love to look at, one of those numbers is the average he put up in 1962. which was .330 at the age of 41. Quite frankly that is an astounding number for any man, even more so at that age. When it came from the bat of "The Man" nobody should have been surprised. He swung that stick for one more year, before that proverbial finish line was crossed, and when it was he was the greatest player that St. Louis had ever seen run the race.Check out the box score here: http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLN/SLN195908070.shtml
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