Last week was  baseball’s opening day. and I wanted to remember the two finest people I ever knew in the sport, and probably the two finest people I had the pleasure to meet anywhere else either.

The man on the left was Brooks Robinson, my very close friend for more than 50 years.

We lost Brooks two years ago.

And man on the my right, was Stan”The Man” Musial he has been gone 12 years.

Stan Musial was Brooks Robinson’s idol when he grew up in Liitle Rock, Arkansas.

He’d listen to Stan’s games on the family radio.

He’d not only follow Musial’s baseball greatness, Brooks would emulate Stan’s enormous respect and kindness to the fans.And that’s what I’m writing about today.

First though,Stan’s baseball numbers are some of the best in the game’s history.

Musial had exactly the same number of hits at home as he did on the road (1,815)? Again, you probably did. It’s one of the more famous bits of statistical trivia, and it speaks to the superhuman consistency of The Man.

Musial won three MVP awards and finished second four other times.

He won seven batting titles and led the league in runs (five times), hits (six times), doubles (eight times), triples (five times), RBIs (twice), total bases (six times) and OPS (seven times).

“How good was Stan Musial?” Vin Scully asked. “He was good enough to take your breath away.”

But those numbers, as great as they are, don’t tell the story of what kind of human being he was.

Harry Caray famously told an anecdote about an obscenely hot St. Louis Sunday, the Cardinals played a doubleheader, and Musial played both games.

Afterward, he was dead tired. He slumped over as he walked out of the park — he was barely even moving, and Caray watched him and wondered if he might just fall over.

Then Musial got to his car, where 50 or 100 kids waited anxiously.

“Watch this,” Caray said to the person walking with him, and just then Musial rose as if he had been inflated with air and he shouted out, “Whaddya say! Whaddya say!” And he signed every last autograph.

In these times of cruelty, inhumanity, and indecency, Stan was a person of immense character and goodness.

He showed me, and millions of others how to be the best at what you do, but also how to be the best in how you treat people.

Kindness.

It was always there with Musial. “Nicest man I ever met in baseball,” Bob Gibson said.

“He was there to offer advice, tell a joke, fold a dollar bill into the shape of a ring that he would then slip onto a fan’s finger.”

Stan loved to play the harmonica and only knew four songs.

One of the songs he knew how to play of the harmonica was “Happy Birthday”.

It would not be unusual for Stan to be in a restaurant and when he saw someone celebrating a birthday…he’d break out the harmonica and play “Happy Birthday” for kids, and total strangers.

I saw him do that personally.

The Dodgers’ pitcher Joe Black — one of the first African American pitchers in the National League — said that the first time he pitched against the Cardinals, he heard racist taunts. After the game, he was sitting by his locker when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

It was Stan.

“I’m sorry that happened,” Musial said. “But don’t you worry about it. You’re a great pitcher. You will win a lot of games.”

Hank Aaron once said “I dIdn’t want to just play like Stan Musial, I wanted to BE like him”.

Stan died in 2013 at the age of 92.

My friend Bob Costas was also a friend of Stan’s.

Stan honored Bob by asking, (while Stan was alive) if he would do his eulogy.

One of the stories Bob told at Stan’s memorial was deeply moving, and Bob himself got choked up telling it:

“I was struck by one in particular. In the early days of integration, more of the significant black and Hispanic players came to the National League than to the American League.

Some were met with open hostility.

In fact, they all were by some ballplayers. Some players were openly hostile.

Others kept a wary distance.

Stan was not an “activist” by nature.

He was just a thoroughly decent human being. At an All-Star Game in the 1950s all the great black players–Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Ernie Banks–were kinda gathered in a corner of the National League clubhouse playing cards. No white players anywhere near them. Then Stan just walked up and casually said, “Deal me in.”

That was his way… of letting those players know that they were welcome.”

At that point, Bob broke down.

Mickey Mantle, who was a flawed but somehow always lovable man, said something that was searingly honest and also in its own way eloquent. He said, “You know, I had as much ability as Stan, maybe more.

Nobody had more power than me, nobody could run any faster than me.

But Stan was a better player than me because he’s a better man than me.

Because he got everything out of his life and out of his ability that he could and he’ll never have to live with all the regret that I live with.”

When baseball season begins anew this week I’ll remember the greatness of baseball’s past as I watch baseball’s present of glittering stars.

But I also want to remember men like Brooks Robinson and Stan Musial.

These men honored the game with not just the play, but their manner.

Joe Posnanski, one of my favorite sports writers who wrote extensively about Musial said he was, in Ford Frick’s words, “Baseball’s Perfect Knight.

Joe wrote:

”You want to tell my story?

Musial said to me once in Cooperstown when I asked for an interview.

He smiled. “My story is easy!

I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”

Stan was a profoundly decent man.

He tried to be a role model. He tried to be a hero. He tried to run out every groundball and tried to put a smile on the face of everyone he ever met.

All you can wish for someone like that is luck.”

But it was baseball was lucky to have “The Perfect Knight” to grace the game.

He and Brooks Robinson were beloved because they played the game with an unforgettable grace and treated human beings with affection and goodwill.

I’ll never forget either of them.

We could all take a lesson in how they carried themselves every single day.