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"When I was growing up, Stan Musial was my idol.\u00A0 He was a symbol of hope and an inspiration of encouragement.\u00A0If a youngster could grow up in the hills and steel mills of Donora, Penn., and become a major league baseball superstar, maybe it could happen to a youngster like me growing up in the\u00A0hills and farm fields of north Missouri.I was in junior high school when \"Stan the Man\" Musial signed a contract for $100,000 a year to play for the St. Louis Cardinals.\u00A0 It was the most ever paid a major league star at the time.\u00A0 More and more, I became a Cardinals fan and relished the day that I might be in such a position.\u00A0 I practiced pitching, I practiced hitting, I practiced running.\u00A0 I knew in my heart that huge salaries like that wouldn't last forever and I wanted to be there before the budget cutting began. Little did I know about the future of major league baseball.When I graduated from eighth grade and the soybean and bean planting was complete, my father took my brother and me to a Cardinals game.\u00A0 It was a beautiful Friday evening, the Cardinals were fighting for first place and playing the Pittsburgh Pirates.\u00A0 My mother desperately wanted to go to Forest Park to see a\u00A0Broadway play at the Muny Opera, but we persuaded her it'd be in the best interest of everyone if we went to the Cardinals game.\u00A0 We got pretty good seats for a small price and my brother and I got 10-cent scorecards to watch the game with.From our seats we went down to the area by the Cardinals dugout and watched batting practice as the Cardinals wrapped up and began coming in for the game.\u00A0 My brother got several autographs.\u00A0 I was disappointed.\u00A0 I hadn't gotten any.\u00A0 And then my most memorable moment of Stan Musial.\u00A0\u00A0 He came directly toward me and I handed him my vacant scorecard.\u00A0 He stopped in mid-stride and signed his name clearly.\u00A0 I was stunned, thrilled, and happy, all at the same time.A Cardinals fan seated nearby gave me a cheer.\u00A0 He said, \"You got the main guy.\u00A0 A few years from now, nobody will ever remember the name of anybody on this team except Stan Musial.\"\u00A0 My brother and I went back to our seats to watch the game, he was excited that he got the most autographs, and I was excited because I got the one that really counted.We saw a great game that night.\u00A0 The Cardinals ended up losing in extra innings.\u00A0 The rest of the season was pretty dismal for the Redbirds.\u00A0 It was the mid-'50s and good pitchers like Bob Gibson were a few years away.\u00A0 But I had my treasure for that season, an autograph from future Hall of Famer, Stan Musial.Larry Moore"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.kmbc.com/article/jan-25-2013-stan-musial/3674014>