A Childhood Hero, A Baseball Legend, and a Promise That Came Full Circle Forty Years Later
Part of The American Time Capsule — preserving the people, places, products, traditions, and everyday moments that shaped growing up in America before the digital age. This article explores the games, adventures, traditions, music, rites of passage, and neighborhood experiences that defined American childhood.
It Started With Maggie
My grandmother on my mother’s side was a tiny but tough Irish immigrant named Margaret Kiernan Rice.
We called her Maggie.
We grandkids adored her.
Every few weeks, one of us would get a turn spending the weekend at her home in Normandy, Missouri. On Sunday, we’d walk hand in hand nearly a mile to St. Ann’s Catholic Church.
Maggie never learned to drive, so walking and riding the bus were simply part of life with her.
Those memories of buses, neighborhoods, family routines, and growing up around St. Louis are part of the same world I wrote about in Growing Up in Ferguson, Missouri.
And sometimes that bus took us somewhere much more exciting than church.
Sportsman’s Park.
Maggie was a die-hard Cardinals fan.
Her son, my Uncle, Jack Rice, was a sportswriter for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and frequently shared behind-the-scenes stories about the team. Cardinal baseball was a constant topic of conversation in her kitchen, where KMOX radio was almost always playing in the background.
She had very definite opinions about the broadcasters.
Harry Caray’s famous home run call—“It might be, it could be, it IS!”—often drew an exasperated response from Maggie.
“Oh, Harry…”
The Buck Family Came Back Into the Story
Years later she was delighted when Jack Buck became the voice of the Cardinals.
Strangely enough, the Buck family would cross my path decades later too.
In 1997, while I was working in the golf business in Scottsdale, Arizona, I hosted a group of twelve golfers from St. Louis. My contact for the group was Joe Buck, Jack Buck’s son.
As I put together their golf package, I mentioned that my Uncle Jack, Maggie and I had all been longtime admirers of his father. I told Joe about Uncle Jack Rice and asked him a small favor.
“Next time you talk to your dad, mention Jack Rice. Tell him you’re working with his nephew on a golf trip out here.”
Joe couldn’t have been nicer. He even brought me a sweater from St. Louis Country Club when the group came to Scottsdale.
But what he brought me that mattered more was a message from his father.
Jack Buck remembered Uncle Jack fondly.
Then Joe told me something I hadn’t expected.
His father remembered Maggie, too.
Apparently Jack Buck had met my grandmother on more than one occasion at sports-related dinners around St. Louis.
I loved that.
The little Irish grandmother who rode the bus with me to Sportsman’s Park hadn’t merely listened to Jack Buck call Cardinals games on the radio.
Jack Buck remembered her.
Somehow, more than forty years later and 1,500 miles from St. Louis, baseball had handed me another little piece of Maggie.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Long before Joe Buck and Scottsdale, long before golf became such a big part of my life, there was just Maggie, a six-year-old grandson, a bus ride across St. Louis—and an afternoon neither of us would ever forget.
The Day Stan Musial Hit Five Home Runs
One afternoon in May 1954, Maggie took me to Sportsman’s Park for a doubleheader.
I was six years old.
Neither of us knew we were about to watch baseball history.
That day, Stan Musial hit five home runs in a doubleheader.
Five.
Not over a week.
Not over a month.
In a single day.
Musial became the first Major League Baseball player to hit five home runs in a doubleheader.
The crowd was electric.
Even as a little kid, I knew I was watching something special.
Another Future Major Leaguer Was Watching
There was another little boy sitting somewhere in Sportsman’s Park that day.
His name was Nate Colbert.
Eighteen years later, playing for the San Diego Padres, Colbert would match Musial’s five-home-run doubleheader feat.
The boy watched the record being set—and grew up to tie it.
“I Remember That Day Too”
A few years later, when I was about ten, Uncle Jack took me along while he interviewed Stan Musial.
I was painfully shy.
After Uncle Jack introduced us, I somehow managed to tell Stan that I had been at Sportsman’s Park the day he hit those five home runs.
Stan smiled.
“I remember that day too.”
I thought I might float through the ceiling.
Wait until my friends hear about this.
Over the years, golf brought me across paths with several members of the Cardinals organization, including pitcher John Fulgham and, eventually, Whitey Herzog.
Golf had been part of my life long before it ever put me on a fairway with baseball legends. I wrote about one of my earliest connections to the game in When Golf Ball Hunting Was a Boy’s Summer Job
I had no way of knowing it then, but one of those connections would eventually bring me back to Stan Musial.
Then Whitey Herzog Called
In 1994 I was working as Director of Tour Operations for the John Jacobs Golf Schools in Scottsdale, Arizona, when I received a call from Whitey Herzog’s assistant.
Whitey had recently retired from the California Angels organization and was passing through Scottsdale on his way home to St. Louis.
He wanted to play golf.
Being a lifelong Cardinals fan, I was happy to arrange it.
On one condition.
I got to play with him.
To my surprise, he agreed.
We played eighteen holes at the Arizona Biltmore Golf Club.
Whitey was exactly as I had hoped—friendly, funny, and full of baseball stories.
Afterward we had dinner at Harry & Steve’s in Old Town Scottsdale.
Heads turned when we walked through the door.
Whitey’s shock of white hair made him instantly recognizable.
Over dinner we talked Cardinals baseball, old St. Louis memories, and mutual acquaintances.
Then Whitey said something that seemed too good to be true.
“Next time you’re in St. Louis, give me a call. I’ll set up a round with Stan.”
I thanked him.
But honestly?
I figured it was just one of those things people say after a few drinks.
“Richard Who?”
A few months later I traveled to St. Louis for my mother’s wedding.
On a whim, I called the number Whitey had given me.
I fully expected the response to be:
“Richard who?”
Instead, Whitey remembered exactly who I was.
And he kept his word.
A few days later I found myself standing on the first tee at Sunset Hills Country Club with Whitey Herzog and Stan Musial.
I was like a kid on Christmas morning.
The Round I Could Barely Believe Was Happening
Stan and Whitey were both left-handed golfers, but that’s about where the similarity ended.
Whitey swung like he was trying to knock the cover off the ball. He’d muscle it with his arms, sometimes falling forward or spinning out after the shot.
Stan was different.
Even years after his retirement from Major League Baseball, he still had that same fluid, athletic grace. His golf swing looked natural and controlled—the kind of motion you’d expect from someone whose body had spent a lifetime understanding how to hit a ball.
I don’t remember whether we even kept score. My memory of some details has faded.
What I do remember is Stan and Whitey teasing each other throughout the round and making little beer bets over who could hit it closest to the pin on the par-3s.
I played reasonably well, but I’m not sure how.
I spent most of the round in a kind of fugue state, wondering whether the whole thing was actually happening.
There I was, playing golf with Whitey Herzog and Stan Musial.
The same Stan Musial I’d watched hit five home runs while sitting beside Maggie at Sportsman’s Park forty years earlier.
The same Stan Musial I’d nervously met as a boy while tagging along with Uncle Jack.
And now I was walking down a fairway beside him.
Stan was every bit the gentleman I had hoped he would be.
At some point our conversation turned to books.
One of Stan’s close friends was the author James Michener. I told Stan that I’d read all of Michener’s books and was a big fan.
He smiled.
“You must be a patient reader. Jim can get a bit windy at times.”
Jim?
That was another mind-bender for me.
I’m playing golf with a baseball legend—and he’s casually referring to one of the greatest writers of our time as Jim.
I had to shake my head.
Imagine that. I’m walking down a fairway with Stan Musial, and we’re discussing James Michener like he was just another one of the boys.
Then Stan surprised me again.
“Speaking of writers, your Uncle Jack had a way with words too, as I recall. I was flattered by what he wrote about me.”
That stopped me.
Stan Musial remembered Uncle Jack.
That meant something to me.
Decades earlier, I had been the painfully shy little kid tagging along while Uncle Jack interviewed him. Now Jack was gone, and here I was walking a golf course with the man he’d once introduced me to.
For a moment, it felt as though several different parts of my life had somehow found their way onto the same fairway.
Then Whitey and Stan started giving each other grief again, somebody had another beer riding on a par-3, and we went back to playing golf.
Decades earlier, I had been the painfully shy little kid tagging along while Uncle Jack interviewed him. Now Jack was gone, and here I was walking a golf course with the man he’d once introduced me to.
For a moment, it felt as though several different parts of my life had somehow found their way onto the same fairway.
Then Whitey and Stan started giving each other grief again, somebody had another beer riding on a par-3, and we went back to playing golf.
Life has a funny way of coming full circle.
From Sportsman’s Park To Sunset Hills
As I drove home afterward, I couldn’t stop thinking about that six-year-old boy sitting beside his grandmother at Sportsman’s Park in 1954.
Maggie had taken me there on a bus.
I had sat beside her and watched Stan Musial hit five home runs in one of the greatest performances in baseball history.
A few years later, Uncle Jack introduced me to Stan, and I somehow managed to tell my hero that I’d been there.
“I remember that day too,” he told me in his matter of fact way
Like he was speaking of an old tie he remembered.
And now, roughly forty years after Maggie and I sat in those stands, I had just spent the day playing golf with him.
If someone had told that six-year-old boy what was coming, he never would have believed it.
Some childhood outings stay with us because we only understand their importance decades later. I explored that same kind of memory in The Day Dad Took Us Plane Watching.
But I found myself thinking about Maggie too.
She never learned to drive.
She walked to church.
She rode the bus.
And one day she took her little grandson on that bus to Sportsman’s Park.
She couldn’t possibly have known where that ride would eventually take me.
From Sportsman’s Park…
to Sunset Hills.
From watching Stan Musial from the stands…
to walking a fairway beside him.
Forty years apart.
One extraordinary circle.
I’ve had a lot of memorable days in my life.
That remains one of the greatest.
And it all started with Maggie.
Your Turn
Most of us had heroes when we were kids—ballplayers, musicians, actors, broadcasters, or someone else who seemed larger than life.
Most of those heroes remained people we watched from a distance.
But every once in a while, life does something unexpected and puts one of them directly in our path.
Who was your childhood hero?
Did you ever get the chance to meet that person? Shake their hand? Have a conversation? Or experience one of those strange full-circle moments when something from childhood suddenly came back into your life decades later?
And for the Cardinals fans: Were you ever lucky enough to see Stan Musial play at Sportsman’s Park? Do you remember Harry Caray, Jack Buck, Whitey Herzog—or listening to Cardinals baseball on KMOX?
Finish this sentence:
“The childhood hero I would have given anything to meet was __________.”
Tell us your story in the comments.
Mine started with Maggie, a bus ride to Sportsman’s Park, and a six-year-old boy who had no idea where that afternoon would eventually take him.
Continue Exploring
Some memories begin with an ordinary childhood day and become more meaningful as the years pass. Keep exploring the people, places, and experiences that helped shape a lifetime.
The Games That Raised a Generation
Before screens took over childhood, games, neighborhoods, and imagination provided the entertainment.
How Did We Ever Make It to Adulthood?
Bikes, homemade ramps, disappearing for hours, and the wonderfully unsupervised childhood many of us somehow survived.
Come Home When the Streetlights Come On
Remember when childhood freedom came with one simple rule: be home when the streetlights came on?
Live at Carnalgie Hall
Another Richard Archives memory about the strange, unexpected ways famous people and unforgettable moments can enter an ordinary life.
The Bunker Rule
Baseball fans have been arguing about players, teams, managers, broadcasters, and the greatest moments in the game for as long as baseball has existed.
You’re welcome to tell me Stan Musial wasn’t your favorite player. You can prefer Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, or somebody else entirely.
You can even tell me Harry Caray was better than Jack Buck—although Maggie might have wanted a word with you about that.
Just keep it friendly.
This isn’t really a debate about who was the greatest ballplayer. It’s a story about childhood heroes, family memories, and those rare moments when life somehow brings the past back around again.
Argue the statistics if you want. Just don’t bean anybody in the comments.
Bunker Notice
This story combines documented baseball history with my personal memories spanning roughly forty years.
Stan Musial’s five-home-run doubleheader, Nate Colbert later matching that feat, and the careers of Musial, Whitey Herzog, Jack Buck, and the other baseball figures mentioned here are matters of historical record.
The conversations, golf stories, family moments, and memories of Maggie and Uncle Jack are told as I remember them. After this many decades, some small details may have faded even when the moments themselves never did.
I may not remember what I shot at Sunset Hills that day.
But I remember who I played with.
And I remember the six-year-old boy who once rode a bus with his grandmother to Sportsman’s Park, never imagining that forty years later he’d be walking a fairway beside Stan Musial.
Some memories don’t need a scorecard.
WOW Dick, Thats really COOL! What a great memory to have!
Thanks T, it was truly a remarkable experience.