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Title details for Stan Musial by George Vecsey - Available

Stan Musial

An American Life

by George Vecsey
Scott Brick
Audiobook
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When baseball fans voted on the top twenty-five players of the twentieth century in 1999, Stan Musial didn’t make the cut. This glaring omission—later rectified by a panel of experts—raised an important question: How could a first-ballot Hall of Famer, widely considered one of the greatest hitters in baseball history, still rank as the most underrated athlete of all time?
In Stan Musial, veteran sports journalist George Vecsey finally gives this twenty-time All-Star and St. Louis Cardinals icon the kind of prestigious biographical treatment previously afforded to his more celebrated contemporaries Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio. More than just a chronological recounting of the events of Musial’s life, this is the definitive portrait of one of the game’s best-loved but most unappreciated legends, told through the remembrances of those who played beside, worked with, and covered “Stan the Man” over the course of his nearly seventy years in the national spotlight.
Stan Musial never married a starlet. He didn’t die young, live too hard, or squander his talent. There were no legendary displays of temper or moodiness. He was merely the most consistent superstar of his era, a scarily gifted batsman who compiled 3,630 career hits (1,815 at home and 1,815 on the road), won three World Series titles, and retired in 1963 in possession of seventeen major-league records. Away from the diamond, he proved a savvy businessman and a model of humility and graciousness toward his many fans in St. Louis and around the world. From Keith Hernandez’s boyhood memories of Musial leaving tickets for him when the Cardinals were in San Francisco to the little-known story of Musial’s friendship with novelist James Michener—and their mutual association with Pope John Paul II—Vecsey weaves an intimate oral history around one of the great gentlemen of baseball’s Greatest Generation.
There may never be another Stan the Man, a fact that future Hall of Famer Albert Pujols—reluctantly nicknamed “El Hombre” in Musial’s honor—is quick to acknowledge. But thanks to this long-overdue reappraisal, even those who took his greatness for granted will learn to appreciate him all over again.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 10, 2011

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780307934437
      • File size: 349032 KB
      • Duration: 12:07:08

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Vecsey's biography of baseball great Stan Musial, who played 22 seasons for the St. Louis Cardinals, is superbly performed by Scott Brick. The story begins at the low point of Musial's life--when fans omitted him from the list of the top 25 baseball players of the twentieth century. Not merely an homage to his incredible career, the work quickly transforms into a chronicle of Musial's life and a tribute to the person he is--a vastly underrated player and a true gentleman. Brick delivers another classic presentation, capturing every aspect of a man known as much for his warmth and caring as for his baseball skills. While this is a "baseball book"--with Vecsey at the typewriter and Brick at the mike, it will appeal to all. D.J.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 28, 2011
      Great bat, no personality is the conclusion in this genial biography of the St. Louis Cardinals slugger. New York Times sports columnist Vecsey (Baseball: A History of Americaâs Favorite Game) insists that the Hall of Famerâs 475 homers and .331 lifetime batting average put him in the company of hallowed contemporaries Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams. Alas, where the aloof Yankee Clipper and the cantankerous Splendid Splinter shared a prickly charisma, Stan the Manâeven a stolid nicknameâwas "the boring one." Vecsey chronicles Musialâs enormously successful if oddly uneventful career, his nonracist (though not outspokenly so) behavior as baseball was desegregating, his kind and self-effacing manner, his happy marriage, his cordial relations with umpires, even his lawn-mowing. A coiled, crouching, butt-waggling batting stance is his only eccentricity. A sportswriter to the bone, Vecsey clothes his subjectâs colorlessness in stirring metaphor and world-historical allusion: if DiMaggio and Williams were "the stormy Himalayas," Musial was "the weathered Appalachians," he rhapsodizes, and caps his account of the Cardsâ 1946 World Series victory with the news that "less than two hours later, ten Nazi leaders were hanged." Unfortunately, no amount of manful writing and extraneous anecdote can redeem the basic dullness of Musialâs story. Photos.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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