Imagine Willie Mays and Stan Musial in the same Cardinals lineup. The Cardinals could. They tried to make it happen.
In June 1957, the Cardinals offered the New York Giants a combination of cash and players for Mays, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported.
In the authorized biography, “Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend,” author James S. Hirsch wrote that Giants owner Horace Stoneham “seriously considered the deal but didn’t pull the trigger because of the club’s pending transfer to San Francisco.”
Opportunity knocks
The Cardinals opened the 1957 season with rookie Bobby Gene Smith as their center fielder, but he struggled to hit and, in desperation, the club shifted Ken Boyer from third base to fill the hole in center.
Meanwhile, the Giants were looking to move from New York. In 1956 and 1957, the only major-league team that drew fewer fans than the Giants was the Washington Senators.
As Mays biographer Hirsch noted, “Unlike their money-losing years from 1948 to 1953, the Giants did squeak out profits, but they could not keep pace with their Gotham rivals. Between 1947 and 1956, the Giants earned $405,926; the Dodgers earned $3.5 million, and the Yankees, $3.6 million.”
The Giants, Hirsch added, “made money only because of their increasing media revenue, receiving $600,000 a year for their television rights.”
In May 1957, National League club owners gave permission to the Giants to move from New York to San Francisco and for the Dodgers to transfer from Brooklyn to Los Angeles after the season.
A month later, the Cardinals made their pitch for Mays.
High stakes
Cardinals executive vice president Dick Meyer and general manager Frank Lane had the approval of Cardinals owner Gussie Busch to attempt a deal for Mays.
“Mr. Busch told me that I was a good general manager and that I ought to get Mays,” Lane told the Globe-Democrat. “I told him I’d try.”
Meyer said to the newspaper, “We were really anxious to get Mays … When we first told Lane to see what he could do about getting Mays, we fixed the cash price at $500,000. That apparently wasn’t enough and we authorized Lane to increase the ante.”
Lane said negotiations started with Giants vice president Chub Feeney and then club owner Horace Stoneham got involved.
“We made four offers for Mays, including one totaling $1 million,” Lane told the Globe-Democrat.
That offer was: $750,000 cash, outfielder Wally Moon, one or two other players on the Cardinals roster and several in the minors, the Globe-Democrat reported.
(According to the Federal Reserve inflation calculator, $750,000 in 1957 would be the equivalent of about $8.1 million today.)
Mays, 26, already had sparked the Giants to two National League pennants (1951 and 1954) and a World Series title (1954). In 1957, the Gold Glove center fielder would have another stellar season, leading the league in triples (20), stolen bases (38) and slugging percentage (.626). He slammed 35 home runs and scored 112 runs that season.
What a duo he and Musial would have formed. Musial, 36, won his seventh league batting title in 1957. He hit .351 and Mays was second at .333. Musial also was the 1957 league leader in on-base percentage (.422) and Mays was runner-up (.407). Musial had 29 home runs and 102 RBI for the 1957 Cardinals.
Mays and Musial had a bond. According to Mays’ biographer, the three players Mays followed as a youth in the 1940s were Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams and Musial. When Mays traveled with the Negro League Birmingham Black Barons in 1948, he attended his first big-league game at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis and got to see Musial hit.
On a plane to an All-Star Game in the mid-1950s, several black players were in the rear, playing cards. According to Mays’ biographer, Musial approached them and said, “Deal me in.” That was his way of telling those players they belonged. “That told me how classy he was,” Mays said, “and I never forgot that.”
Wrong time
The Giants’ gave “serious consideration” to the Cardinals’ offer for Mays, the Globe-Democrat reported, before opting to decline. Lane said to the newspaper, “Feeney told me the last time we talked about a Mays deal that it was out of the question. As I recall, Chub told me that if they traded Mays and then moved to San Francisco, the people out there would throw them into the bay.”
Stan Isaacs of Newsday wrote that moving the Giants to San Francisco “wasn’t nearly as shocking” as considering a trade of Mays to the Cardinals.
The San Francisco Examiner noted, “Willie certainly must be a lot of baseball player to be worth that kind of money. Since the offer made by the Cardinals was turned down, it must be assumed Stoneham thinks Willie is worth even more.”
Stoneham told International News Service he “appreciated” the offer. In explaining why he rejected it, Stoneham said, “The money was not important. We’re not broke … What we want … above all else is a winning ballclub. All ballclubs have one special player … and to us it is Willie who is that ballplayer. We can build a team around Willie. Maybe that’s the answer to why we didn’t trade him to the Cardinals or anyone else.”
Then Stoneham, in that 1957 interview with International News Service, added, “Maybe we will sell him about 15 years from now, if somebody has a few ballplayers nearly as good.”
Fifteen years later, in May 1972, the Giants dealt Mays, 41, to the Mets for pitcher Charlie Williams and $50,000.