Susan Stein did what she was supposed to do that Saturday morning in 1964.
She went to religious school at Temple Israel in Memphis. Then she came home and found several members of the World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals sitting in her family’s living room.
“I remember it was on a Saturday, and my mother made me go to religious school that morning,” she said. “When I got home the players were already at our house.”
More than 60 years later, those memories resurfaced after Stein read May 20’s Morning Light newsletter intro reflecting on rediscovering Busch Stadium, cheap beer hunts and the Cardinals Reminiscence League at the J.
“The subject of the email caught my eye,” she wrote later. “Then I read about the Alzheimer’s patients reminiscing and thought these pictures from their past heroes might be useful.”
The email included a remarkable series of family photographs featuring Tim McCarver, Bill White, Ken Boyer and Mike Shannon during a 1964 visit to Memphis shortly after the Cardinals won the World Series.
The photographs, she later explained, were most likely taken by her mother, Thelma Shainberg Waller, who was born in St. Louis and grew up in New Madrid, Missouri.
A Memphis connection
Stein’s father, Howard Waller, owned two Dixie-Mart stores in Memphis, which she described as “a precursor to Super Walmart.”
The Cardinals players signed autographs at one store in the morning, had lunch at the family’s home, then traveled to the second store for another autograph session later that afternoon.
“Dad knew Tim McCarver, who was from Memphis,” she said.
At the time, she was just 8 years old.
“I just remember them all being very nice,” she said of the players.
Still, certain moments stayed frozen in place.
“The only picture I’m in was with Mike Shannon,” she said.
Another favorite shows McCarver casually talking on the telephone. A third captures Ken Boyer speaking directly with her.
“Of course, I like the one with Ken Boyer talking to just me,” she said.
McCarver’s reaction
The photographs resurfaced publicly years later when Stein attended a Tim McCarver book signing and decided to bring the old prints with her.
“When it came my turn to have my book signed, I handed him these pictures,” she wrote.
McCarver immediately recognized how unusual they were.
“Where did you get these?” he asked.
He later added a fresh autograph to the decades-old photos, layering one Cardinals memory onto another.
The memories stayed
For Stein, the photos are tied to much more than baseball.
“One of my earliest memories was a trip to St. Louis and seeing a series against the Milwaukee Braves when I was 6,” she said. “McCarver hit a grand slam in my first major league game.”
Years later, during a return visit to St. Louis, she walked around the statues outside Busch Stadium honoring the Cardinals players she grew up idolizing.
“I think I cried the whole time because of all the happy memories from my childhood,” she said.
And maybe that’s why the photos still matter.
Not because Tim McCarver once sat in the family living room talking on the phone. Or because Ken Boyer paused to speak with one 8-year-old girl.
But because for one afternoon in Memphis, baseball stopped feeling so big and distant and became part of a Jewish family’s ordinary life.
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