On Saturday, January 19th, 2013, baseball legends Earl Weaver and Stan Musial passed away. Earl Weaver, 82, was a Hall of Fame manager for the Baltimore Orioles. He led the squad to a .583 winning percentage over seventeen years including a World Series in 1970.
Weaver was a steam kettle waiting to let his steam out, as he was ejected from 91 games over his managerial career.
“Earl Weaver stands alone as the greatest manager in the history of the Orioles organization and one of the greatest in the history of baseball,” Orioles owner Peter Angelos said. “This is a sad day for everyone who knew him and for all Orioles fans. Earl made his passion for the Orioles known both on and off the field. On behalf of the Orioles, I extend my condolences to his wife, Marianna, and to his family.”
He will always be remembered for his time with the Orioles, as he even had a statue placed in his honor. Dick Gordon said Weaver’s wife told him that Weaver went back to his cabin after dinner and began choking between 10:30 and 11 Friday night. Gordon said a cause of death has not been determined.
Weaver finished with a 1,480-1,060 record with the Orioles, winning Manager of the Year three times, and being inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1996.
Stan ‘The Man’ Musial who was one of the best hitters in the game, passed away at age 92 due to natural causes. Winning seven batting titles, three MVPs, and won three World Series, Musial was rewarded with two statues outside Busch Stadium in his honor.
“It is a very sad day for me,” Willie Mays told ESPN’s Willie Weinbaum of Outside The Lines at the Baseball Writers’ Association of America dinner in New York. “I knew Stan very well. He used to take care of me at All-Star games, 24 of them. He was a true gentleman who understood the race thing and did all he could. Again, a true gentleman on and off the field — I never heard anybody say a bad word about him, ever.”
Spending his whole 22 seasons with the Cardinals, Musial played 3,026 games with St. Louis. Considered the best Cardinal of all-time, Musial was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1969, in his first year of eligibility.