The city of St. Louis and the Cardinals buried baseball royalty Friday when they said goodbye to Red Schoendienst, who died June 6 at the age of 95.

Albert “Red’’ Schoendienst was a walking, talking slice of Americana. Born in the Roaring Twenties, he grew up in a town of 800 in rural Illinois. His mother fashioned baseballs for Red and his siblings out of sawdust (no, they didn’t last very long). He quit school to join FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps and came close to losing an eye when a work project went terribly wrong.

Signed by the Cardinals in 1942, he worked his way through the system while being drafted by Uncle Sam and discharged because of that eye problem. Called up during the 1945 season, he played in the first big league game he ever saw. Nope. You can’t make this stuff up.

His true coming-out party was in 1946. That’s when he became the regular second baseman for the Cardinals. That season marked the first of his 10 All-Star Game appearances and the first of his three World Series appearances as a player, the next two coming a decade later as a Milwaukee Brave. It was a career that culminated in his election to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1989. But that’s not the whole story.

There are a lot of Hall of Famers. Some are nice. Some are, well, less nice. Only few transcend their athletic greatness to become not just respected but truly beloved. Just think Johnny Pesky.

Red Schoendienst was, in fact, the St. Louis answer to Boston’s Johnny Pesky. Each man had his best years with a certain team. Each parted company with that team, for whatever reason, and each did so reluctantly. Each gravitated back to that team to spend decades as an invaluable resource to the organization. That they were on opposing sides in the memorable 1946 World Series adds to the tale.

Schoendienst was a switch-hitting second baseman with a lifetime average of .289. As you might suspect, he usually made contact, striking out a mere 346 times in 9,224 plate appearances. His signature season was 1953, when he chased Carl Furillo to the wire in the batting race (hitting .342 to Furillo’s .344).

In his prime, Schoendienst was a doubling madman, with such accomplishments as eight doubles in a three-game stretch and five in a doubleheader. He led the league in two-baggers with 43 in 1950. That was the year he became the first person to decide an extra-inning All-Star Game with a home run when he hit Ted Gray’s first pitch of the 14th inning into the Comiskey Park stands. With a career total of 84 homers, he was among the less likely people to make that kind of All-Star history.

He definitely excelled in the field. He established a record with a .9934 fielding percentage in 1956, set a standard with 320 straight chances without an error in 1950, and led National League second basemen in fielding percentage six times.

He and the city of St. Louis were jolted on June 14, 1956, when infamous general manager Frank “Trader’’ Lane packaged him with three mates in a deal with the New York Giants, the prize acquisition being shortstop Alvin Dark. The fans were outraged, but no one was stung more than Stan Musial.

“It was the saddest day of my life,’’ Musial would later say.

The stay in New York was uneventful, but things got better for Schoendienst when the Braves, in rather desperate need for a second baseman, acquired him on June 15, 1957. It would go down in Braves history, for Schoendienst proved to be the missing ingredient as the Braves won their first pennant and World Series in 1957 and took home another pennant in 1958. He actually led the league in hits (200) during that fateful 1957 season.

Schoendienst’s life took a rather drastic turn in 1958. Soon after the World Series concluded with a disappointing seven-game loss to the Yankees, he was in St. John’s Hospital in St. Louis. The baseball world was stunned to learn that he had dragged himself through the 1958 season while battling tuberculosis.

“I was sick on and off all summer,’’ he explained in a 1959 article in Sport magazine. “I kept having colds and these pains in my side. My right side hurt most of the time, off and on. It hurt whether I was playing or not, but it was worse when I played.’’

But the big thing was that he felt perpetually tired. “Every game felt like three doubleheaders,’’ he said.

The recovery process involved an operation in which part of his right lung was removed, as was a piece of rib.

Schoendienst was unfailingly upbeat throughout, which surprised no one.

“The doctor told me I could be cured,’’ he explained. “That’s all I needed to know. I looked on myself as an automobile that got out of whack and had to be fixed. It needed new parts and then it would run as well as it ever did. Except in my case they took out a part.’’

Who knew when Schoendienst retired following the 1963 season that the real story was just beginning? Phase 2 began with him being a coach on the 1964 champs. He then managed the Cardinals to the 1967 title, defeating some team from Boston in seven games.

There would be a few years spent outside the Cardinals organization (much like Pesky’s tenure with the Pirates), but no one in St. Louis thinks about that. No, if Stan the Man was Mr. Cardinal 1, then Red Schoendienst was Mr. Cardinal 1A. But Stan the Man didn’t spend as many post-career hours in a Cardinals uniform as Red did. Not even close.

Red Schoendienst wore his Cardinals uniform into his late 80s, wielding a mean pregame and spring training fungo bat while dispensing wisdom to generations of St. Louis players, managers, and coaches.

Both Tony La Russa and Mark McGwire couldn’t say enough good things about him, not solely because of his baseball acumen. The overwhelming memory of Red Schoendienst was that of a thoroughly decent man who was impossible not to like.

Musial himself said it best before he died: “He is one of the kindest, most decent men I’ve ever known in my life. Even more important than having been his teammate or roommate, however, is having been his friend for so many years. They don’t come any better.’’

St. Louis writer and radio personality Bernie Miklasz unearthed a fascinating tidbit about Red Schoendienst. He found out what “Schoendienst’’ meant in German.

Are you ready? It means “beautiful service.’’

Sounds like 95 well-lived years to me.

Bob Ryan’s column appears regularly in the Globe. He can be reached at ryan@globe.com.