On May 2, 1954, Now you know why they call Stan Musial Stan the Man. No other hitter in major league history ever hit five home runs in one day. Only nine days ago Musial was bumping along at .250. gripped by the same slump that tortured him_| last spring. Now he is hitting .400 with eight homers and seven doubles among his 24 hits. The $80,000-: salaried St Louis Cardinal outfielder leads the majors with 21 runs batted in and shares the home run lead with Chicago’s Hank Bauer.

The six-time batting champion of the National League “slumped’’ to .337 last year, a few points below| his .345 lifetime batting average. As late as mid-June he was strug­gling at the .250 mark.

“All I need is one of those four- for-four days,” he said then. He got his four for four yester­day in the first game, three home runs and a single off New York Giant pitching. Then he added two more homers in the second game. Six men had hit four homers in a double-header but Musial never had hit three. Five men had hit five homers in two consecutive games, but not on the same day. Sunday, May 2, 1954, will go down in the books as Musial Day in St. Louis, the day Stan hit three atop the right field pavilion and two over the roof, bouncing across Grand Avenue.

Musial’s clubhouse comment was typical of a team man: “You can’t smile too much when you lose a ball game.’’ For the Cards did lose that second game 9-7 after taking the opener 10-6. In a strange twist, one of the fans in attendance at Sportsman’s Park is a 8 year old boy named Nate Colbert. In 1966, Colbert will make his major league debut. Six years later, he will tie Musial’s record by hitting five homers in a twinbill on August 1, 1972.