St. Louis Cardinals had a prized future friend on 1919 White Sox

St. Louis native Dickey Kerr managed, befriended, and inspired the great St. Louis Cardinals player, Stan Musial. What is the history behind that relationship?

The St. Louis Cardinals have a happy link to the otherwise infamous 1919 Chicago Black Sox through a tiny hurler who accomplished the “greatest pitching feat of all time.”

A century ago (how time flies!), the Chicago White Sox lost the World Series in suspicious fashion to the underdog Cincinnati Reds five games to three. Two of Chicago’s three victories occurred with five-foot-seven-inch rookie lefty Dickey Kerr, one of the “clean Sox,” on the mound.

Twenty-one years later, Kerr would tutor a nineteen-year-old Cardinals prospect named Stan Musial, encouraging the kid to concentrate on hitting when the youngster injured his pitching shoulder. In 1941, Stan the Man and wife Lillian would name their first son Richard in honor of Richard Henry “Dickey” Kerr, a man Musial would call “the best friend I’ve ever had.”

Back in 1919, however, Kerr was just a little pitcher with big ears on a White Sox team that should have trounced the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series. As you doubtless know, eight White Sox players would be accused of throwing the Series and banned for life by commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis. The ill-fated eight included superstar outfielder Shoeless Joe Jackson and pitchers Eddie Cicotte (a 29-game winner in 1919) and Lefty Williams (a 23-game winner).

The third-best pitcher on the Chicago staff, Kerr went 13-7 with a 2.88 regular-season ERA before an unlikely 3-0 shutout of the Reds in Game 3. “The eight of us did our best to kick it and little Dick Kerr won the game by his pitching,” Joe Jackson said.

Kerr won Game 6 as well, going 10 innings and prevailing 5-4 despite three White Sox errors. Shortstop Swede Risberg, one of the principal Black Sox conspirators, committed two of the miscues, and center fielder Happy Felsch, another member of the crooked cabal, committed the other.

More than half a century later, Red Sox lefty Bill “Spaceman” Lee referred to Kerr’s two 1919 World Series wins as the “greatest pitching feat of all time” because he did it despite a clutch of teammates trying to lose at least one of those games.

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In 1940 Kerr, a St. Louis native, managed the Daytona Beach Islanders, a Cardinals affiliate in the Class A Florida State League with a teenage pitcher-outfielder named Stanislaus Francis Musial on the roster.

The skipper and his wife, Cora, took Musial to their hearts and home, persuading the cash-strapped prospect to live with them. On Aug. 5th, Dickey and Cora Kerr drove Lillian “Lil” Musial to the hospital for the birth of the younger couple’s first son, christened Richard for the man who managed and encouraged his father.

Six days later, Musial wrecked his left (throwing) shoulder by landing on it while lunging for a ball in the outfield, ending any shot at pitching his way into the big leagues. Kerr is credited with turning the part-time outfielder into a full-time hitting star, although Musial’s batting talent already trumped his pitching ability — he had a hard time throwing strikes, but he sure could hit them.

Musial never forgot Kerr’s role in his baseball development — and his life. In 1958, the year Stan the Man would smack his 3,000th hit, Kerr, 65, was working for an electric company in Houston and struggling to make ends meet. Musial bought Dickey and Cora Kerr a house. His former minor league manager called it, “The luckiest thing that ever happened to me in my life. I couldn’t be happier.”

Dickey Kerr died in 1963, the last year of Musial’s 22-season big-league career. Three years later, in 1966, the greatest Cardinal of them all presided as a Dickey Kerr statue was unveiled at the Houston Astrodome.