Bob Broeg, 87; St. Louis Sportswriter Coined ‘Stan the Man’ Moniker

Bob Broeg, 87, longtime St. Louis Post-Dispatch sports editor and columnist credited for nicknaming Stan Musial “Stan the Man,” died Friday in Creve Coeur, Mo., of pneumonia. He had been in ill health for five years, during which he suffered two strokes and lost his vision.

Broeg joined the PostDispatch in 1945 as a baseball writer, covering the St. Louis Browns (now the Baltimore Orioles) at Sportsman’s Park, and was shifted to covering the Cardinals a year later.

He was credited by the National Baseball Hall of Fame with nicknaming Musial, after learning from a Cardinals traveling secretary that Brooklyn Dodgers fans would murmur, “Here comes the man” when Musial came to bat. The name stuck.

A graduate of the University of Missouri at Columbia, Broeg was a prolific writer. He penned 20 books on sports, contributed to the Sporting News and was said to have written more for the Post-Dispatch than any other writer in the newspaper’s history.