Humble shortstop Marty Marion should be in Hall contention

It's remarkable, really, how the reputations of baseball players rise and fall through the years, the way great fiction writers go in and out of style. In both cases, the work is the work — though occasionally additional manuscripts can be found for a novelist.

Players remain on the baseball Hall of Fame ballot for 15 years — at least until new voting rules limit them to 10 years beginning next year — and see their vote totals rise and fall, sometimes dramatically. Without recording a single additional out or reaching base one more time, players who had been kept out of the Hall of Fame for decades suddenly gain admission via the veterans committee.

So I raise the case of Marty Marion, aka Slats or Mr. Shortstop, honored last weekend as an inductee into the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame, not because we've discovered some hidden, extra season Marion played at Sportsman's Park.

Instead, it's worth reflecting on Marion, a contemporary of often-honored Pee Wee Reese and Phil Rizzuto, for two reasons: His greatness ought to be celebrated by those who experienced it firsthand, and Marion shouldn't get overlooked because he didn't believe in touting himself.

Consider for a moment what the following résumé would mean in terms of fame for a player in today's game: National League MVP in 1944. Two other top-10 MVP finishes. Starting shortstop for four National League pennant winners. Seven All-Star Games.

"He made it easy," Marion's double-play partner, Hall of Fame second baseman Red Schoendienst, said last week at Busch Stadium. "Marty made it easy. I think he should be in the Hall of Fame."

And Marion packed all of it into a career that first ended at 32 because of persistent back and knee problems. Marion was 27 when Schoendienst arrived, and Red remembers Marion's back hurting by then.

Marion retired in 1952, and the Cardinals promptly made him manager. An attempt to come back, as player-manager, for the St. Louis Browns in 1952 and 1953 led to some part-time work.

And then it was over. No one who saw him missed his greatness. But those who didn't, well, Marion didn't bother to tell them. And so, while a five-time All-Star shortstop and one-time American League MVP, Rizzuto, stayed in the public mind for decades announcing for the New York Yankees (and eventually made it to Cooperstown), Marion didn't.

"He never campaigned for anything," Schoendienst said. "Marty was a good businessman, but he never did ever try to go out and sell himself."

"Daddy did not talk baseball a lot," his daughter, Martinna Dill, said Saturday after giving a wonderful acceptance speech on behalf of Marion. "But what he did say was very to the point."

You'd seldom find Marion at baseball card shows — not because he eschewed his public, but because he was convinced no one would want his autograph or that anybody would make a fuss.

Instead, Marion would invite his family over to the nearby Ladue, Mo., home he inhabited with his wife of 74 years, Mary, and make some of his famous fried chicken and key lime pie while Willie Nelson or Johnny Cash played on the stereo.

"I think Stan (Musial) tried to tell him to be doing more stuff," Virginia Howell, a granddaughter-in-law of Marion, recalled. "But he wouldn't do it. He was about being with family. Dogs and family and Sunday dinner."

Even baseball itself was something he'd happily discuss — but if you brought it up to him.

"In his basement was where he kept that memorabilia," said Marion's great-grandson, Jack Howell. "And he'd never bring it up. We'd have to go down there ourselves. And half the time, it would all be gone. When he got the No. 4 (plaque from the countdown of games remaining) at Busch Stadium, he said, 'Yeah, some guy just came over, and I just gave it to him.' And we were like, 'Wait, why would you do that?' And he said, 'Well, I don't want it!'

"

That generosity of spirit extended beyond his baseball goods. Players had no pension to speak of for most of Marion's career, but Marion had a head for business. He led the player movement to change that, and he did so decades before Curt Flood and Marvin Miller blazed trails in this area. Don't think those paying attention missed it — or that work like that on behalf of the players made it likely that owners would go to bat for Mr. Shortstop when it came time to be honored.

"It's what a lot of people are benefiting from today," Dill said Saturday. "Well, Marvin Miller one day called. And I was in the kitchen, in my parents' home. And he said, 'Marty, would you believe the pension plan is what it is today?'

" Dill said her father felt he had a responsibility to help his fellow players.

Dill and her three sisters, Ginger Lochmoeller, Nancy Marion-Lowe and Linda Sylvanovich, were present Saturday at Ballpark Village. Around 1,000 Cardinals fans came out in the rain to celebrate the team's history.

But just how many in that crowd — filled with Willie McGee No. 51 shirts, fans who had been present for Jim Edmonds' circus catches or had seen Mike Shannon homer or heard him on the radio — had seen Marion play? It couldn't have been more than a few. Noted Hall of Fame historian Jay Jaffe pointed out that Marion's 130 defensive runs saved are 10th among shortstops since 1900. But all we have are some clips and the memories of those who remember.

Dill remembers.

She remembers getting dropped off at the nurse's office of Sportsman's Park as a girl, her protective father wanting her taken care of until Mary arrived. I watched her point out the precise spot in Sportsman's Park, along the third-base line, where the wives and children sat in a long-ago destroyed ballpark, preserved in a model in the Cardinals museum.

Dill remembers what it meant to her father to lead the NL in doubles in 1942 and to win that Trolley Car Series in 1944, the only time the Cardinals and Browns faced off in the World Series.

"I can remember being carried out with him, on his shoulders, as he's signing autographs," Dill said. "And in those days, they signed a lot of autographs. ... Those fans were paying your salary. And my father was humbled and proud to be a St. Louis Cardinal."

Schoendienst remembers.

"I've seen Rizzuto play, and I've seen Pee Wee Reese play, and I've seen (Eddie) Miller of Cincinnati play, and I've seen so many other ones," Schoendienst said. "And Marty's right there with him, no matter what.

"Marty Marion ... when the ballgame was on the line, he always made the big play, and he didn't make any errors. If he made an error, you were getting beat by 10 runs, or you're winning by that many.

"If he made any fault at all, it was never in the crucial time of a ballgame. And if his back would've held up, I don't know that anybody would have been any better."

Megdal is the Leading Off columnist for Sports Weekly.