Happy Mothers’ Day from all of us at Baseball History Comes Alive!

We can’t let an occasion like this pass without a connection to old-time baseball! So here’s my little contribution to the day, a salute to…

“Baseball Mothers!”

In the featured photo, we see the great Stan Musial in a nice photo with his mother, Mary. Looks like she has a pretty Mothers Day courage.  In reading about her in the Stan Musial SABR biography by Jan Finkel, I learned that Stan’s mother,  Mary Lancos, was the daughter of Czech immigrants from the Austro-Hungry empire. Mary was born in New York and one of ten children:

“She was close to six feet tall, big-boned, and although untrained, probably athletic. Not unusual for the time and place, she had become a housekeeper when she was eight.”

Mary married Polish immigrant Lukasz Musial on April 14, 1913.  At the time she was 16 and he was 23, although the marriage certificate said she was 21, suggesting, according to Jan Finkel that “she likely hadn’t received her parents’ permission to marry, as was the law in Pennsylvania for people under 21.”  The couple had four daughters (Ida, Victoria, Helen, and Rose) in six years, and then came a son, Stanley Francis, nicknamed “Stash,” who we came to know as Stan Musial. 

Click on any photo in the gallery to see a photo tribute to other baseball mothers. So far I’ve found the mothers of Ernie Banks, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson, Lou Gehrig, Paul and Lloyd Waner, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Walter Johnson, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, and Birdie Tebbetts.

As we look at Lou Gehrig helping his mother Christina with the dinner dishes, let’s remember to do our part so that our wives and mothers can all have a special day!