Musgrave Returns

(Columbia Missourian, May 5, 1993)

Bob Musgrave said today's players are similar to those on the 1954 championship team.

As he walked into Simmons Field on April 25, Bob Musgrave looked up at the flagpole and said ``There it is, there's our flag.''

He wasn't a veteran paying homage to Old Glory. Rather, he was a member of the 1954 Missouri baseball team looking at the commemorative flag. That team was the only M.U. one to ever win a national championship.

``We had a great team that year, as a team I think we hit .311. I hit .418 and about five other guys hit over .300,'' Musgrave said. ``But more impressively, we had a team ERA of about 2.30.''

That combination helped Missouri to a 22-4 record, 11-1 in the Big Seven Conference. After losing the first conference game, the Tigers rattled off 11 straight.

Winning the national championship did not come as a total shock to Musgrave and his teammates.

"We came in second place in the state in American Legion baseball and won 17 straight football games at Hickman,'' Musgrave said.``So it was almost like you expected to win. I got to Missouri and I expected us to do well and we did.

"We had some great athletes on that team. Jerry Schoonmaker still holds several records, I'm still fifth in on-base percentage for a season (.526), and our captain Dick Dickenson, Buddy Cox and our two pitchers, Emil Kammer and Ed Cook were all great ballplayers.''

Schoonmaker was named All-American in 1954 and is the only member of that team to see any major league service. He played with the Washington Nationals (who became the Senators in 1957) for parts of 1955 and 1957, compiling a .130 batting average in 50 games and 69 at bats.

Musgrave was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles, but never made it to the major leagues.

Although he didn't play in the majors, Musgrave has seen many games in New York where he works in corporate public relations.

Living in New York, Musgrave has found it difficult to keep up with Missouri baseball, usually just getting the score in the paper. But recently, he had a chance to get together with old high school and college teammates, a chance he welcomed.

"I came back last year for my 40th high school reunion,'' Musgrave said. ``My buddy Dick Hazle and I played on the undefeated state champs in 1951. They held a Black and Gold golf tournament, and Dick and I finished something like 6th. But it was a lot of fun, seeing a lot of jocks that I hadn't seen in - my God - 40 years.''

The first game he saw all year proved to be a success, as Jason Meyhoff pitched the Tigers to a 7-6 victory. But while watching, he couldn't help comparing the 1954 team to the current Tigers.

"I know we would throw the ball 90 mph, and not much else has changed in baseball. The players are all the same size we were,'' Musgrave, a right fielder, said. ``I see these guys in the outfield, and I have to think that I could throw that hard, but I still ask myself if I did. I guess at 59 years old, the old arm feels a little different, and you're not all that sure.''

The game may not have changed, and it may not have improved from Missouri's view. No Tiger team has come close to winning a national chammpionship in baseball, a fact that took a while to sink in for Musgrave.

"When you're playing in high school and college, you don't realize what you did,'' he said. ``We had an awful good team, certainly, and now it's been 39 years and suddenly no one has even come close, you say, `whoa, that's an awesome accomplishment,' and obviously history has proven that."



"We were having fun and nobody ever got serious," outfielder Bob Musgrave recalled. "I would occasionally sing Lefty Friesell songs out in right field, and more than once I probably gave 'Hi' an ulcer or two. I was a little bit of a rebel or an iconoclast, but only because I was having fun and life at that time was kind of an experiment where you make the best of it."
(Columbia Missourian, December 31, 1999)


''I'm sure we drove Hi nuts,'' Kammer said. ''Bob, he was always doing something, just goofing off. He was the wild guy of the bunch. He didn't like a bat we had so he went to a dimestore and bought a 98-cent bat. Biggest damn thing you ever saw, but he could hit with anything.''
(Columbia Missourian, March 13, 1994)


MUSGRAVE ANTICS

Outside the batter's box, Musgrave was an original.

"Bob was the real character of the whole ballclub,'' shortstop and team captain Dick Dickinson said.

Missouri basketball coach Norm Stewart, a sophomore pitcher in 1954, said the team had an air of Gashouse Gang about it.

"There's no comparison in talent, but the attitude's the thing,'' Stewart said. ``It was a loose group.''

He recalls Musgrave singing country songs and walking on his hands in the outfield. One time at Colorado, Stewart said, Musgrave did both - hand- walking while singing Hank Snow's ``It Don't Hurt Anymore.'' Then there was the ``imaginary focusing of the eyes.'' He remembers Musgrave swinging and
missing, then leaning out of the box and looking toward the bench while making a turning motion with his hand next to his eye. Then he hit the next pitch way out of the park.

"When you're 19 or however old I was, you just have that sort of carefree insouciance as the French say,'' said Musgrave, now retired from a public relations career in White Plains, N.Y.

``I was pretty serious, but at the same time I enjoyed having a good time,'' Musgrave said. ``You have a little bit of ham in you when you're young.

``I had a pretty good audience.''

Simmons was the one critic whose opinion mattered.

``Occasionally I would see him roll his eyes as if, `Oh, my God, what's he
doing now?' '' Musgrave said. ``I kind of knew how far I could go, because Hi
was a pretty tough cookie.''

Simmons gives them thumbs up for attitude. ``They had a lot of fun, but when the game started they were all business.''

(Columbia Daily Tribune May 14, 1994)