Stan the Music Man : Baseball: Thirty years after he retired, the St. Louis Cardinals’ Hall of Famer has found a second career.

ST. LOUIS —  Stan Musial is still piling up the hits.

Thirty years after he retired from baseball, the St. Louis Cardinals’ Hall of Famer has found a second career. He’s now Stan the Music Man, and he wields a pretty mean harmonica.

Mean enough to merit a how-to book for beginners, an instructional cassette and a spot in a local trio known for its sessions of “Geriatric Jazz.”

“He’s an amateur player,” music publisher Mel Bay said. “One of the most difficult things was finding 58 songs without sharps or flats.

“But Stan doesn’t have to be great. His personality and his fame makes it great. He can play a half-dozen songs and still make a hit record.”

Musial’s main business these days is autographs. After signing for free for decades, his company, Stan the Man Ltd., has added a price tag for the serious collector. A few days each week Musial, 73, shows up at a small office near his home for an hour or so.

“The memorabilia business has gotten so big and these promoters are selling all this stuff,” Musial said. “So I thought I’d join them. It’s all pretty commercial, but that’s the way it is.”

Musial said he can sign about 300 items per hour, which can be pretty lucrative at $100 per bat, $50 for lithographs and $20 to $25 for balls.

But now that the .331 career hitter can’t really use any of that stuff, his new first love seems to be music.

“Playing the harmonica is almost as much fun as playing baseball,” Musial says in his song book.

Not as frustrating, either, considering the current state of the game.

“It’s catastrophic, really, what’s happened,” Musial said of the strike and canceled season. “Everybody loves this game. Probably, we were underpaid in our days somewhat. Probably these players are overpaid.”

Baseball makes Musial, a senior vice president with the Cardinals, shake his head ruefully. Music makes him tap his feet to the beat. And he doesn’t appear to care whether he makes a dime off it.

“It’s fun,” Musial said. “It really is fun.”

Musial always has been musically inclined. In the 1940s, he was part of an informal jug band that celebrated the Cardinals’ victories. Musial played coat hangers, while others manned the washtub and medicine ball. But no harmonica.

“It’s funny, when I was with the Cardinals I never played it much,” Musial said. “I didn’t know too many songs at that time.”

Now he knows at least 58. Among the chestnuts offered in his song book are “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairies,” “Camptown Races,” “On Top of Old Smokey” and “Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis.”

With a little work, anyone can do it, Musial said. Just purse your lips and blow.

“I learned as a kid,” he said. “It’s not hard to play. Like anything else, you’ve got to practice.”

Musial has entertained at dinners for years with his crowd-pleasing version of “Wabash Cannonball” and a few others. He’s also played with the likes of Al Hirt and country-western artists Charlie Pride and Roy Clark. Musial and St. Louis Symphony pops conductor Richard Hayman performed a harmonica duet of the National Anthem for the Cardinals’ opener last season.

“It’s nice they let an amateur like me join them,” Musial said.

But it all had been dabbling before he met Bay, 81, about a year ago at Bay’s music store in a St. Louis suburb.

It wasn’t long before Bay, a big baseball fan, suggested Musial put his talents to use. Musial and Bay, who’s famed for his best-selling guitar method books, formed the “Geriatric Jazz” trio along with banjo player John Becker.

“Now we’re getting so many requests to play, we need an agent,” Musial said. “Our group could be a lot of places playing.”

At least one time the group wasn’t discriminating enough when it picked a nursing home for a concert.

“Most of the time I like to play with my eyes closed, so I can concentrate and hit the right notes,” Musial said. “Anyway, there must have been around 100 people around at this nursing home. I’m half way through my song, and I open my eyes and half of the people are sleeping.”

Musial didn’t take it personally.

“I just played loud and woke them up,” he said with a laugh.

The song book has pictures of Musial showing how to hold the harmonica, as well as a page on Musial’s career baseball record and photos of him on the field.

Uh oh, reminders of the game again. Bay’s a little worried the baseball strike will affect sales.

“I’m just hoping that baseball strike will not leave a feeling of antipathy among the fans,” Bay said. “We have all these millionaires out there holding up the game.”

Musial promises to help them forget.

“He’s sure crazy about that harmonica,” Bay said.