Latest News

Now he is back in Hawaii with his family, without credibility, and also without a job, a cancer foundation to represent or any foreseeable income that would come close to the millions he once earned from the sponsors that abandoned him last fall.

So what is Armstrong's next move? Antidoping officials are hoping he has one thing at the top of his to-do list: to knock on their doors.

Travis Tygart, the chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, and David Howman, the director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency, are eager to see if Armstrong will come to them to testify under oath about his doping. They want to see if he is willing to provide details of how he doped and got away with it for so long.

With Winfrey, Armstrong failed to delve into any of the details of his doping, leaving many important questions unanswered. He did not provide names of the people who helped him dope. He never explained how he so masterfully evaded testing positive for more than a decade.

By giving that information to antidoping authorities, Armstrong could help improve a sport fighting to rid itself of a dark cloud of doping. It also could hasten his possible redemption, according to Steven Ungerleider, a psychologist who wrote a book about the East German doping machine and has been a consultant to the Olympic movement for more than 35 years.

"I support Lance and I support his disclosures," said Ungerleider, who has been in contact with Armstrong's team of advisers. "But coming forward on 'Oprah' was just a very tiny baby step for him. He has to realize that he could leave a tremendous legacy if he were to meet with the WADA folks and assist them in cleaning up the sport by putting everything he knows on the table.

"I know he probably doesn't think so now, but he could really come out of this with a positive legacy that he could leave for his children."

Ungerleider said he did not expect Armstrong to come forward right away, though, because Armstrong is "dealing with enormous grief, anger and denial" that will take a while to work through.

Armstrong said Saturday in an e-mail that he would spend some quiet time with his family before deciding his plans. It is "highly unlikely" that he will be speaking to the United States Anti-Doping Agency, he said, but "anything is possible."

It is more likely that he will come forward with details about his doping past to a truth and reconciliation commission. The purpose of that commission, which might be formed this year, would be to elicit truthful confessions from riders in exchange for lenient sanctions or no sanctions.

In his interview with Winfrey, Armstrong said he could not be the man to push for that amnesty effort because he does not have credibility in the sport, but that he would be a willing participant.

"If they have it, and I'm invited, I'll be the first man at the door," he said.

Armstrong began speaking with Usada officials last month, when he met them in Denver to discuss how he could mitigate his lifetime ban from Olympic sports.

His goal is to compete in triathlons and running events, but most of those are sanctioned by organizations that follow the World Anti-Doping Code, under which he is serving a lifetime ban. If he does help officials build cases against others, his ban could be reduced to eight years.

"My hope is that deep down, he wants to help the sport, and that's why he would come forward with information," said Jonathan Vaughters, one of Armstrong's former teammates who testified against Armstrong.

"I don't know precisely what information he has, but he could potentially help the testing methods improve," he said. "But under oath, he would need to be very specific with names and dates and times. He can't just say what he said to Oprah. He needs to give up much more."

Before Armstrong decides if he will speak with antidoping authorities, he will very likely have to deal with several pressing legal issues, including one involving the federal government.

The Department of Justice is mulling whether to join a federal whistle-blower case in which Armstrong is named as a defendant. That lawsuit was filed by Floyd Landis, one of Armstrong's former teammates, and claims that Armstrong and his associates defrauded the government by allowing doping on the United States Postal Service team when doping was explicitly forbidden in the sponsorship contract.

Armstrong has offered $5 million to settle the case, but the government has asked for more, said a person with knowledge of the case who did not want his name used because the case was sealed.

How that lawsuit turns out is just one of the many questions that looms over Armstrong. And how it will be answered is as uncertain as his days ahead.

"Let's just move by that," Coach John Tortorella said when asked if the lockout was to blame for the Rangers' uneven performance. "I'm not going to keep talking about the short season. We've started the season, and we did not play well enough to win. The Bruins did."

Unlike most N.H.L. teams, the Rangers did not try to simulate a game by playing a scrimmage against their A.H.L. affiliate or an intrasquad scrimmage during the six-day training-camp period that ended Friday — they did not even practice in public.

"I wanted to work with our team," Tortorella said about why he chose not to stage a scrimmage.

Whether the lack of a scrimmage was a factor, the Rangers started the game in a bit of a fog. They were outshot, 14-7, outhit and took a series of penalties that left them on their heels.

"There was a lot of rust in the first period," said the team's prized off-season acquisition, Rick Nash, who looked strong in his Rangers debut. "There was a lot of hype in the last few days to play this game, and we didn't play the way wanted to."

But he added about the Rangers' home opener Sunday against Pittsburgh, "The good thing is we play again tomorrow night."

On Saturday in Boston, the fans, the players and the league were out to banish the memory of the four-month lockout, the third the owners have called in two decades.

No messages recalling the lockout were written on the ice, like the much-ridiculed "Thank you fans" the league mandated in all rinks after the 2004-5 stoppage. The pregame ceremony was brief and to the point: some bagpipers, an introduction for each Bruin, the national anthem, and the season was on.

Four players made their debut in a Rangers uniform, including Nash, the 30-goal player acquired from Columbus. He pulled off some terrific moves, including a couple in which he skated backward to shield the puck from a defenseman, then turned 180 degrees to shoot.

But ultimately Nash was stymied, limited to two shots and an assist on the Rangers' lone goal.

There were fights — two in a row from these two teams that led the league in fighting majors last season, the Rangers with 65 and the Bruins with 61. Mike Rupp traded blows with Boston's Shawn Thornton midway through the second period, and three seconds later, Stu Bickel fought the Bruins' Gregory Campbell. The crowd seemed to love it.

Yet the lockout was not completely forgotten, thanks to one of its architects. During a news conference before the game, Jeremy Jacobs, the Bruins' owner and chairman of the N.H.L. Board of Governors, blamed the players union for the four-month impasse.

Jacobs began by reading a prepared statement apologizing for the lockout, but it included a veiled criticism of the union.

"I wanted nothing more than to have the season start in October," Jacobs, the hard-line chairman of the N.H.L. Board of Governors, said. "Make no mistake — it should have."

Asked why he thought a settlement was not reached in October, Jacobs said, "You'd really have to ask the other side that," adding, "there was no expression of desire to make a deal."

"I'm not going to give him credit for anything," Jacobs said in answer to a question about Donald Fehr, the union's executive director.

But on the ice and in the stands, the lockout was well in the past. Milan Lucic opened the scoring 14 minutes 14 seconds into the game, knocking a rebound of a shot from David Krejci past Henrik Lundqvist. Daniel Paille made the score, 2-0, for Boston 8:20 into the second period with a tip-in.

The Rangers finally struck at 12:50, when Brad Richards nailed the top corner of the net behind Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask with a wrist shot from the top of the circle.

At 7:07 of the third period, Lundqvist made a diving glove save to Rob Krejci and keep the score at 2-1.

"It was a fun save, but I made it in desperation," said Lundqvist, who finished with 31 saves.

But at 8:13, a shot from Johnny Boychuk seemed to deflect off Patrice Bergeron's stick past Lundqvist, making the score 3-1.

"We definitely have a way to go," Richards said. "We have to learn some things pretty quickly."

Stan the Man was so revered in St. Louis that he has two statues outside Busch Stadium — one just wouldn't do him justice. He was one of baseball's greatest hitters, shining in the mold of Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio even without the bright lights of the big city.

Musial won seven National League batting titles, was a three-time MVP and helped the Cardinals capture three World Series championships in the 1940s.

The Cardinals announced Musial's death in a news release. They said he died Saturday evening at his home in Ladue surrounded by family. The team said Musial's son-in-law, Dave Edmonds, informed the club of Musial's death.

"We have lost the most beloved member of the Cardinals family," team chairman William DeWitt Jr. said. "Stan Musial was the greatest player in Cardinals history and one of the best players in the history of baseball."

Musial was the second baseball Hall of Famer who died Saturday. Longtime Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver also passed away, at age 82.

Musial spent his entire 22-year career with the Cardinals and made the All-Star team 24 times — baseball held two All-Star games each summer for a few seasons.

A pitcher in the low minors until he injured his arm, Musial turned to playing the outfield and first base. It was a stroke of luck for him, as he went on to hit .331 with 475 home runs before retiring in 1963.

Widely considered the greatest Cardinals player ever, the outfielder and first baseman was the first person in team history to have his number retired. Ol' 6 probably was the most popular, too, especially after Albert Pujols skipped town.

At the suggestion of a pal, actor John Wayne, he carried around autographed cards of himself to give away. He enjoyed doing magic tricks for kids and was fond of pulling out a harmonica to entertain crowds with a favorite, "The Wabash Cannonball."

Humble, scandal-free, and eager to play every day, Musial struck a chord with fans throughout the Midwest and beyond. For much of his career, St. Louis was the most western outpost in the majors, and the Cardinals' vast radio network spread word about him in all directions.

Farmers in the field and families on the porch would tune in, as did a future president — Bill Clinton recalled doing his homework listening to Musial's exploits.

Musial's public appearances dwindled in recent years, though he took part in the pregame festivities at Busch during the 2011 postseason as the Cardinals won the World Series. And he was at the White House in February 2011 when President Barack Obama presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor for contributions to society.

At the ceremony, President Obama said: "Stan remains to this day an icon untarnished, a beloved pillar of the community, a gentleman you'd want your kids to emulate."

He certainly delivered at the plate.

Musial never struck out 50 times in a season. He led the NL in most every hitting category for at least one year, except homers. He hit a career-high 39 home runs in 1948, falling one short of winning the Triple Crown.

In all, Musial held 55 records when he retired in 1963. Fittingly, the accolades on his his bronze Hall plaque start off with this fact, rather than flowery prose: "Holds many National League records ..."

He played nearly until 43rd birthday, adding to his totals. He got a hit with his final swing, sending an RBI single past Cincinnati's rookie second baseman — that was Pete Rose, who would break Musial's league hit record of 3,630 some 18 years later.

Of those hits, Musial got exactly 1,815 at home and exactly 1,815 on the road. He also finished with 1,951 RBIs and scored 1,949 runs.

All that balance despite a most unorthodox left-handed stance. Legs and knees close together, he would cock the bat near his ear and twist his body away from the pitcher. When the ball came, he uncoiled.

Unusual, that aspect of Musial.

Asked to describe the habits that kept him in baseball for so long, Musial once said: "Get eight hours of sleep regularly. Keep your weight down, run a mile a day. If you must smoke, try light cigars. They cut down on inhaling."

One last thing, he said: "Make it a point to bat .300."

As for how he did that, Musial offered a secret.

"I consciously memorized the speed at which every pitcher in the league threw his fastball, curve, and slider," he said. "Then, I'd pick up the speed of the ball in the first 30 feet of its flight and knew how it would move once it has crossed the plate."

It worked pretty well, considering Musial began his baseball career as a pitcher in the low minors. And by his account, as he said during his induction speech in Cooperstown, an injury had left him as a "dead, left-handed pitcher just out of Class D."

Hoping to still reach the majors, he turned toward another position. It was just what he needed.

Musial made his major league debut late in 1941, the season that Williams batted .406 for the Boston Red Sox and DiMaggio hit in a record 56 straight games for the New York Yankees.

Musial never expressed regret or remorse that he didn't attract more attention than the cool DiMaggio or prickly Williams. Fact is, Musial was plenty familiar in every place he played.

Few could bring themselves to boo baseball's nicest superstar, not even the Brooklyn Dodgers crowds that helped give him his nickname, a sign of weary respect for his .359 batting average at Ebbets Field.

Many, many years before any sports fans yelled "You're the man!" at their favorite athletes, Stan was indeed the Man.

Dodgers pitcher Preacher Roe once joked about how to handle Musial: "I throw him four wide ones and then I try to pick him off first base."

Brooklynites had another reason to think well of Musial: Unlike Enos Slaughter and other Cardinal teammates, he was supportive when the Dodgers' Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier in 1947. Bob Gibson, who started out with the Cardinals in the late 1950s, would recall how Musial had helped established a warm atmosphere between blacks and whites on the team.

Like DiMaggio and Williams, Musial embodied a time when the greats stayed with one team. He joined the Cardinals during the last remnants of the Gas House Gang and stayed in St. Louis until Gibson and Curt Flood ushered in a new era of greatness.

The only year Musial missed with the Cardinals was 1945, when he was in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He was based in Pearl Harbor, assigned to a unit that helped with ship repair.

Before and after his military service, he was a star hitter.

Musial was the NL MVP in 1943, 1946 and 1948, and was runner-up four other years. He enjoyed a career remarkably free of slumps, controversies or rivalries.

The Cardinals were dominant early in Musial's career. They beat DiMaggio and the Yankees in the 1942 World Series, lost to the Yankees the next year and defeated the St. Louis Browns in 1944. In 1946, the Cardinals beat Williams and the visiting Red Sox in Game 7 at Sportsman's Park.

Musial, mostly a left fielder then, starred with Terry Moore in center and Slaughter, another future Hall of Famer, in right, making up one of baseball's greatest outfields. Later on, Musial would switch between the outfield and first base.

Musial never played on another pennant winner after 1946. Yet even after the likes of Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron came to the majors, Musial remained among baseball's best.

The original Musial statue outside the new Busch Stadium is a popular meeting place before games and carries this inscription: "Here stands baseball's perfect warrior. Here stands baseball's perfect knight."

"Everybody's a Musial fan," former Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog once said.

Musial gave the press little to write about beyond his grace and greatness on the field. He didn't date movie stars, spike opponents or chew out reporters or umpires.

In 1958, he reached the 3,000-hit level and became the NL's first $100,000-a-year player. Years earlier, he had turned down a huge offer to join the short-lived Mexican League. He never showed resentment over the multimillion dollar salaries of modern players. He thought they had more fun in his days.

"I enjoyed coming to the ballpark every day and I think we enjoyed the game," Musial said in a 1991 Associated Press interview. "We had a lot of train travel, so we had more time together. We socialized quite a bit and we'd go out after ball games."

He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1969, his first year of eligibility.

"It was, you know, a dream come true," Musial once said. "I always wanted to be a ballplayer."

After retiring as a player, Musial served for years in the Cardinals' front office, including as general manager in 1967, when the Cardinals won the World Series.

In the 1970s, Musial occasionally played in Old-Timers' Day games and could still line the ball to the wall. He was a fixture for decades at the Cooperstown induction ceremonies and also was a member of the Hall's Veterans Committee. Often, after the Vets panel had voted, he'd pull out a harmonica conveniently located in his jacket pocket and lead the other members in a rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."

Into the 2000s, Musial would spend time with the Cardinals at spring training, thrilling veterans and rookies alike with his stories.

Ever ready, he performed the national anthem on his harmonica at least one opening day at Busch Stadium. Musial learned his music during overnight train trips in the 1940s and in the 1990s was a member of a trio known as "Geriatric Jazz" and collaborated on a harmonica instructional book.

Stanley Frank Musial was born in Donora, Pa., on Nov. 21, 1920, son of a Polish immigrant steelworker. He began his minor league career straight out of high school, in June 1938, and soon after married high school sweetheart Lillian Labash, with whom he had four children.

Musial fell in 1940 while trying to make a tough catch and hurt his left arm, damaging his pitching prospects. Encouraged by minor league manager Dickie Kerr to try playing outfield, he did so well in 1941 that the Cardinals moved him up to the majors in mid-September — and he racked up a .426 average during the final weeks of the season.

In his best year, 1948, he had four five-hit games, hit 39 home runs and batted .376, best in the National League. He also led his league that year in runs scored (135), hits (230), total bases (429), doubles (46), and triples (18).

In 1954, he set a major league record with five home runs in a doubleheader against the New York Giants. He hit .300 or better in 16 consecutive seasons and hit a record home runs in All-Star play, including a 12th-inning, game-winning shot in 1955.

In 1962, at age 41, he batted .330 and hit 19 home runs. In his final game, on Sept. 29, 1963, he had two hits at Busch Stadium against the Reds and the Cardinals retired his uniform number.

He was active in business, too. He served as a director of the St. Louis-based Southwest Bank. He was co-owner of a popular St. Louis steakhouse, "Stan Musial and Biggie's," and a bowling alley with former teammate Joe Garagiola (leading to a bitter fallout that eventually got resolved). He later ran Stan the Man Inc., specializing in merchandise he autographed. Musial was known for handing out folded $1 bills.

A prominent Polish-American, he was a charter member of the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame and was warmly regarded by his ancestral country, which in 2000 dedicated Stan Musial Stadium in Kutno, Poland. Musial also was involved politically, campaigning for John F. Kennedy in 1960 and serving as Lyndon Johnson's director of the President's Council on Physical Fitness.

Musial's versatility was immortalized in verse, by popular poet of the times Ogden Nash, who in "The Tycoon" wrote of the Cardinals star and entrepreneur:

"And, between the slugging and the greeting,

To the bank for a directors' meeting.

Yet no one grudges success to Stan,

Good citizen and family man,

Though I would love to have his job

One half tycoon, one half Ty Cobb."

The Cardinals said Musial is survived by his four children, Richard, Gerry, Janet and Jean, as well as 11 grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren.

Musial's wife died in May 2012.

Funeral arrangements had not yet been finalized, the Cardinals said. The team set up a memorial site around one of Musial statue's at Busch Stadium.

___

Associated Press writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report.

The Cardinals announced the news, saying he died at his home in Ladue, Mo., surrounded by family.

A signature Musial image endures: He waits for a pitch in a left-handed crouch, his knees bent and close together, his body leaning to the left as he peers over his right shoulder, the red No. 6 on his back. The stance was likened to a corkscrew or, as the White Sox pitcher and Dodger coach Ted Lyons once described it, "a kid peeking around the corner to see if the cops are coming."

Swinging from that stance, Musial won seven batting championships, hit 475 home runs and amassed 3,630 hits. His brilliance lay in his consistency. He had 1,815 hits at home and 1,815 on the road. He drove in 1,951 runs and scored 1,949 runs. And his power could be explosive: he set a major league record, equaled only once, when he hit five home runs in a doubleheader.

"There is only one way to pitch to Musial — under the plate," Leo Durocher, the manager of the Brooklyn Dodger and New York Giant teams that Musial often victimized, once said.

He was renowned for his concentration at the plate, and his patience: he struck out only 696 times in 10,972 at-bats — or 6 percent of the time — in his 22 major league seasons, all as a Cardinal. A gentlemanly and sunny figure — he loved to play "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" on his harmonica — he was never ejected from a game. When admirers approached him, he chatted them up with his familiar "whattayasay, whattayasy."

But he otherwise had little of the glamour of the other stars of his era — from the World War II years to the early 1960s — when baseball was the undisputed king of sports. He did not have the mystique of Joe DiMaggio, the tempestuousness of Ted Williams, the electrifying presence of Willie Mays, the country-boy aura of Mickey Mantle. His Cardinals were far removed from the coastal media centers, and he shunned controversy.

He simply tattooed National League pitching.

Musial played on three World Series championship teams, won three Most Valuable Player awards, had a career batting average of .331 while playing in the outfield and at first base, and was the fourth player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

He was the most cherished Cardinal of them all in a city that witnessed the exploits of Grover Cleveland Alexander and Rogers Hornsby, Dizzy Dean and the Gashouse Gang, Enos Slaughter, Marty Marion, Red Schoendienst, Ozzie Smith, Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Mark McGwire and Albert Pujols.

Pujols, the slugger from the Dominican Republic, was sometimes saluted as El Hombre as he neared the end of his time in St. Louis.

"I don't want to be called that," he told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2010. "There is one man that gets that respect, and that's Stan Musial. I know El Hombre is The Man in Spanish. But he is The Man."

A frail Musial, wearing a Cardinal red sport jacket, came to the White House in February 2011 to receive the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, from President Obama, who called him "untarnished, a beloved pillar of the community, a gentleman you'd want your kids to emulate."

There is one Gateway Arch in St. Louis but two statues of Stan the Man. Both are outside the Cardinals' Busch Stadium, the earlier one engraved with the words of Ford Frick, the baseball commissioner at the time, speaking at a ceremony before Musial's final game, on Sunday, Sept. 29, 1963, at home against the Cincinnati Reds: "Here stands baseball's perfect warrior. Here stands baseball's perfect knight."

Stanley Frank Musial was born on Nov. 21, 1920, in Donora, Pa., a zinc and steel mill town some 30 miles from Pittsburgh where smokestacks sent grime aloft around the clock. He was the fifth of six children of Lukasz Musial, a Polish immigrant who worked at a steel and wire company, and his wife, Mary, a New York City native of Czech descent.

His father had no interest in the frivolity of baseball, but the young Musial competed in gymnastics at a Polish sports club, developing his athleticism, and he played baseball with balls that his mother sewed from rags and string. His family and friends called him Stashu, the diminutive for the Polish Stanislaus.

His high school didn't have a baseball team, but he excelled in American Legion play as a left-handed pitcher, and he could hit as well. The Cardinals signed him to a minor league contract for the 1938 season.

Musial was pitching for the Cardinal farm team at Daytona Beach in the Florida State League in 1940 when he injured his left shoulder diving for a ball while playing the outfield part time. He was converted to a full-time outfielder, and his batting prowess brought him to the Cardinals in September 1941.

Playing left field in a superb outfield with Terry Moore in center and Slaughter in right, Musial hit .315 in 1942, when the Cardinals staged a furious pennant run to overtake the Dodgers, then defeated the Yankees in the World Series.

Musial hit .357 in 1943, winning his first batting title, but the Cardinals lost to the Yanks in a repeat World Series matchup. He batted .347 in 1944, when the Cardinals were again pennant-winners and defeated the St. Louis Browns in what was known as the Streetcar Series.

Musial spent 1945 in the Navy, which assigned him to play baseball for its ball clubs to entertain servicemen. When he returned to the Cardinals, he picked up where he had left off, winning his second battling title with a .365 average in 1946 and helping to propel the Cardinals to the pennant, which they won in a playoff with the Dodgers. They also won the World Series title, defeating the Boston Red Sox.

That Series was the last in which blacks were barred from playing. By the spring of 1947, Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier with the Dodgers.

That did not sit well with Cardinal players, according to some reports, which said they had talked about refusing to take the field in protest when the team was scheduled to play at Brooklyn in May. But the truth of those accounts remains murky, and the Cardinals did, in fact, play against Robinson.

Musial did not speak out on racial issues, but he showed no reluctance to face black players. He liked to tell of how he once played baseball with blacks in his hometown, among them Buddy Griffey, the grandfather and father of the outfield stars Ken Griffey and Ken Jr.

The Dodgers' Don Newcombe, major league baseball's first black pitching star, recalled hearing taunts from some Cardinal players, but never from Musial or Schoendienst, Musial's longtime roommate.

"We'd watch 'em in the dugout," Newcombe told George Vecsey in "Stan Musial: An American Life" (2011). "Wisecracks, call names. I could see from the mound when I got there in '49. You never saw guys like Musial or Schoendienst. They never showed you up. The man went about his job and did it damn well and never had the need to sit in the dugout and call a black guy a bunch of names, because he was trying to change the game and make it what it should have been in the first place, a game for all people."

The Cardinals did not have a black player until 1954.

Despite Musial's consistent brilliance, the Cardinals fell in the standings during the late 1940s and '50s, when the Dodgers of Robinson, Newcombe and Roy Campanella and the Giants of Mays and Monte Irvine dominated the National League.

Musial thrived at the Dodgers' Ebbets Field, plastering the right-field scoreboard and hitting home runs over it, and winning the grudging admiration of the notoriously tough Brooklyn fans.

"I did some phenomenal hitting there," he told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "The ball park was small, so the seats were close to the field and you could hear just about anything anybody said. Then I'd come to the plate and the fans would say, 'Here comes that man again.' And a sportswriter picked it up and it became Stan the Man."

The nickname, attributed to Bob Broeg of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, stayed with Musial as he piled up the hits, parlaying his talent with intense concentration at the plate.

"I'm always set for a fastball," Musial told The Saturday Evening Post in 1958 when he got hit No. 3,000. "When I'm concentrating up there, I know that pitcher's best fastball. When he lets the ball go, if that ball jumps out in front of me there about 30, 40 feet, I know it's got to be a fastball. If he lets that ball go and it doesn't come up that quick, then it's going to be a change or a curve. I never watch the spin of the ball. I watch the ball in its entirety, and what it's doing, and how fast it's reacting to me. And then I try to adjust from there."

Musial was durable as well. He once held the National League record for consecutive games played, a streak that ended at 895 when he hurt a shoulder in August 1957. He won his seventh and last batting title that season, hitting .357. The following year, he became the first National League player with a $100,000 contract.

Musial retired after the 1963 season, having played in 24 All-Star Games. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1969.

After his playing days ended, Musial became an adviser to the Cardinals as a senior vice president. The Cardinals ended an 18-year pennant drought in 1964 and beat the Yankees in the World Series, having finally fielded outstanding black players like Gibson, Brock, Curt Flood and Bill White.

Musial succeeded Bob Howsam as the Cardinals' general manager in 1967, but the team was set to contend when he took the job and he made no major personnel moves. That team, managed by Schoendienst, went on to defeat the Boston Red Sox in the World Series.

Musial stepped down from the post after the season to pursue his business interests, notably the St. Louis restaurant popularly known as Stan and Biggie's. He had been greeting guests there as a co-owner since 1949, when he bought into a steakhouse run by Julius Garagnani, known as Biggie, a product of the Italian-American Hill section of St. Louis.

Musial is survived by his son, Richard; his daughters Gerry Ashley, Janet Schwarze and Jeanne Edmonds; 11 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. His wife, Lillian, whom he married in 1940, died in May 2012 at 91.

St. Louis did not forget Musial. At the 2009 All-Star Game there, he received a huge ovation as he rode onto the field in a golf cart and handed President Obama a baseball for his ceremonial first pitch. And Musial did not forget the Cardinals. He visited with the team during the 2011 playoffs and World Series, when they defeated the Texas Rangers in seven games.

Musial was well appreciated even by rival players. "Stan was such a nice guy that I was probably happy for him when he homered off me," Johnny Antonelli, a leading left-handed pitcher of the 1950s, told Danny Peary in the oral history "We Played the Game" (1994).

Musial had an explanation for his good nature. "Maybe one reason I'm so cheerful is that for more than 20 years I've had an unbeatable combination going for me — getting paid, often a lot, to do the thing I love the most," he told Sports Illustrated in 1963. "The love is important, but let's not pretend; so is the money. My old Cardinals coach, Mike Gonzales, used to say to me, 'Musial, if I could hit like you, I'd play for nothing.' Not me. But I wouldn't play for the money without the fun."

The language buried in Section 632 of the law delays a set of Medicare price restraints on a class of drugs that includes Sensipar, a lucrative Amgen pill used by kidney dialysis patients.

The provision gives Amgen an additional two years to sell Sensipar without government controls. The news was so welcome that the company's chief executive quickly relayed it to investment analysts. But it is projected to cost Medicare, and thus taxpayers, up to $500 million over that period.

Amgen, which has a small army of 74 lobbyists in the capital, was the only company to argue aggressively for the delay, according to several Congressional aides of both parties.

Supporters of the delay, primarily leaders of the Senate Finance Committee who have long benefited from Amgen's political largess, said it was necessary to allow federal regulators to prepare properly for the pricing change.

But critics, including several Congressional aides who were stunned to find the measure in the final bill, pointed out that Amgen had already won a previous two-year delay, and they depicted a second one as an unnecessary giveaway.

"That is why we are in the trouble we are in," said Dennis J. Cotter, a health policy researcher who studies the cost and efficacy of dialysis drugs. "Everybody is carving out their own turf and getting it protected, and we pass the bill on to the taxpayer."

The provision's inclusion in the legislation to avert the tax increases and spending cuts that made up the so-called fiscal cliff shows the enduring power of special interests in Washington, even as Congress faces a critical test of its ability to balance the budget.

Amgen has deep financial and political ties to lawmakers like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, and Senators Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, and Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, who hold heavy sway over Medicare payment policy as the leaders of the Finance Committee.

It also has worked hard to build close ties with the Obama administration, with its lobbyists showing up more than a dozen times since 2009 on logs of visits to the White House, although a company official said Saturday that it had not appealed to the administration during the debate over the fiscal legislation.

Aides to Mr. Hatch and Mr. Baucus, and a spokeswoman for Amgen, said the delay would give the Medicare system and medical providers the time they needed to accommodate other complicated changes in how federal reimbursements for kidney care were determined.

"Sometimes when you try to do too much and too quickly, you screw up," said Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for Mr. Hatch. The goal, an Amgen spokeswoman said in a written statement, is "to ensure that quality of care is not compromised for dialysis patients."

But the measure runs counter to a five-year effort in Washington to control the enormous expense of dialysis for the Medicare program by reversing incentives to overprescribe medication.

Amgen's success also shows that even a significant federal criminal investigation may pose little threat to a company's influence on Capitol Hill. On Dec. 19, as Congressional negotiations over the fiscal bill reached a frenzy, Amgen pleaded guilty to marketing one of its anti-anemia drugs, Aranesp, illegally. It agreed to pay criminal and civil penalties totaling $762 million, a record settlement for a biotechnology company, according to the Justice Department.

Amgen, whose headquarters is near Los Angeles and which had $15.6 billion in revenue in 2011, has a deep bench of Washington lobbyists that includes Jeff Forbes, the former chief of staff to Mr. Baucus; Hunter Bates, the former chief of staff for Mr. McConnell; and Tony Podesta, whose fast-growing lobbying firm has unusually close ties to the White House.

Amgen's employees and political action committee have distributed nearly $5 million in contributions to political candidates and committees since 2007, including $67,750 to Mr. Baucus, the Finance Committee chairman, and $59,000 to Mr. Hatch, the committee's ranking Republican. They gave an additional $73,000 to Mr. McConnell, some of it at a fund-raising event for him that it helped sponsor in December while the debate over the fiscal legislation was under way. More than $141,000 has also gone from Amgen employees to President Obama's campaigns.

What distinguishes the company's efforts in Washington is the diversity and intensity of its public policy campaigns. Amgen and its foundation have directed hundreds of thousands of dollars in charitable contributions to influential groups like the Congressional Black Caucus and to lesser-known groups like the Utah Families Foundation, which was founded by Mr. Hatch and brings the senator positive coverage in his state's news media. It also contributed $250,000 to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., last year.

Amgen has sent large donations to Glacier PAC, sponsored by Mr. Baucus in Montana, and OrrinPAC, a political action committee controlled by Mr. Hatch in Utah. It also has contributed to the Montana Democratic Party, which supports Mr. Baucus at home.

And when Mr. Hatch faced a rare primary challenge last year, a nonprofit group calling itself Freedom Path sponsored advertisements in Utah that attacked his opponent, an effort that tax records released in November show was financed in large part by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade group that includes Amgen.

In some cases, the company's former employees have found important posts inside the Capitol. They include Dan Todd, one of Mr. Hatch's top Finance Committee staff members on health and Medicare policy, who worked as a health policy analyst for Amgen's government affairs office from 2005 to 2009. Mr. Todd, who joined Mr. Hatch's staff in 2011, was directly involved in negotiating the dialysis components of the fiscal bill, and Mr. Hatch's spokeswoman acknowledged that he had had conversations with Amgen lobbyists.

For years, Amgen used its clout in Washington to lobby for generous Medicare payments for its blockbuster drug, Epogen, which fends off anemia in dialysis patients.

The Medicare program covers most costs associated with treating severe renal disease, regardless of a patient's age, and the dialysis market continues to grow steadily. In 2010, the government's kidney program was spending $1.9 billion on injectable anti-anemia drugs like Epogen.

But nearly a decade ago, evidence started to surface that questioned the effectiveness and safety of Epogen at the levels being used.

Researchers found that Medicare's practice of reimbursing providers with separate payments for the drugs and for dialysis treatments encouraged overprescription because the providers made healthy profits with each dose. They also found that high doses posed cardiovascular risks to patients.

Congress reversed the incentive in 2008 by requiring Medicare to pay a single, bundled rate for a dialysis treatment and related medications starting in 2011. With providers potentially profiting more by prescribing less Epogen, use of dialysis drugs quickly dropped by nearly 25 percent.

But the blow was softened for Amgen and other kidney care companies with a few favors from Congress. Among them was a two-year delay in the inclusion of certain oral drugs, Sensipar among them, in the new bundled payment system. That meant demand for Sensipar would not decline and Amgen would maintain control over pricing.

With that two-year exclusion set to expire in 2014, Amgen's lobbyists began making rounds again on Capitol Hill last fall. In private meetings with staff members of the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees, they argued for another two-year delay, several Congressional aides said.

Committee staff members had been meeting regularly in Room S-124 of the Capitol to negotiate a package of Medicare cuts needed to prevent a large scheduled reduction in doctors' fees. The kidney program was on the table because a new report by the Government Accountability Office had found that Medicare had overpaid for dialysis by up to $880 million in 2011.

The discussions about cutting dialysis reimbursement began late last fall with little focus on a delay for oral drugs, but it was eventually endorsed by leading staff members for Mr. Baucus and Mr. Hatch, Congressional aides said.

Aides to the senators said the delay made sense because the Government Accountability Office had warned in early 2011 that federal regulators should take care in setting compensation levels for the drugs.

But others on Capitol Hill saw no justification for further delay.

"It is disappointing," said a Democratic Congressional aide who declined to be named because of the issue's sensitivity, "since the status quo encourages prescribing of oral drugs based on financial incentives rather than on best clinical practices."

Mr. Hatch's spokeswoman, Ms. Ferrier, said the involvement of Mr. Todd, the former Amgen employee, had not been inappropriate and that dozens of staff members on Capitol Hill handled matters that might benefit former employers.

"They have to leave their previous lives behind," Ms. Ferrier said. "And Dan has done just that and done a very good job of working with all the stakeholders on this."

After the House was effectively sidelined late in the fiscal negotiations, the Senate gained control of the final bill-writing process, and the provision requested by Amgen was inserted into the legislation by Senate staff members.

Aides to Mr. Baucus and Mr. Hatch emphasized that the White House and Senate leadership, including Mr. McConnell, had the final word on the bill.

A spokesman for Mr. McConnell praised the parts of the legislation related to Medicare, while a White House spokesman declined to comment, saying the matter was decided by players on Capitol Hill.

Many lobbyists and Congressional aides said they first learned of the language when the final bill was posted publicly, only hours before being approved. It called for cutting $4.9 billion over 10 years by lowering Medicare payments for dialysis, but left hundreds of millions on the table by extending the oral drug delay.

At this point, opponents had no way to challenge the provision, as there was a single vote on the entire fiscal package. Both Mr. Baucus and Mr. Hatch voted in favor.