[George Vecsey]Stan Musial : An American Life(epub){Zzzzz}

Veteran sports journalist George Vecsey finally gives this twenty-time All-Star and St. Louis Cardinals icon the biographical treatment he deserves. Stan Musial 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. Away from the diamond, Musial 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, Vecsey weaves an intimate oral history around one of the great gentlemen of baseball’s Greatest Generation.

Publisher: ESPN; Reprint edition (May 1, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0345517075
ISBN-13: 978-0345517074

Review
“Big hitter Vecsey scores with [this] tribute.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“[George] Vecsey’s exhaustively researched book, Stan Musial: An American Life, winningly captures the essence of this son of the Depression; it is also filled with yearning for an earlier, perhaps better, time in sports: before steroids and showboating athletes, when the boys of summer traveled to games by train and the World Series ended in mid-October.”—Associated Press

“Vecsey brings a fans’ reverence and a skilled journalist’s love of incisive research to this book, and the result is a sumptuous trip through a mid-20th century when baseball really was the National Pastime.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Baseball fans get their fix of one of the game’s brightest stars when they read George Vecsey’s new book.”—USA Today

“Fastidiously researched . . . a rich glimpse behind the cheerful facade.”—Sports Illustrated

“A biography of a worthy subject by a worthy author.”—Los Angeles Times

“Plenty of fascinating Musialiana.”—The Wall Street Journal

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

The Life and Times of the Donora Greyhound
By WryGuy2 TOP 500 REVIEWER on April 8, 2011
I first started following professional baseball as a boy in 1969, six years after Stan Musial, Cardinal outfielder, first baseman, and hitter extraordinare, retired from the game. But as I listened to Pirate games on the radio, the Pirate announcers would still occasionally talk about Stan Musial whenever the Bucs would play the Cardinals, in respectful ... almost reverential tones. As I continued to learn about the game and some of its past heroes, Stan Musial, in my young mind, achieved near-mythical status, similar to Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Honus Wagner, and others. It also didn't hurt that he was also from Pennsylvania, only an hour or so from where I grew up.

As such, he's always been one of those ballplayers that I wanted to know more about. I knew about his statistics ... 3630 hits, .331 lifetime batting average, 475 home runs (in an era when 400 home runs really meant something), 3 Most Valuable Player awards, and so on, but I wanted to learn more than just the stats. So, I was happy to see this biography, "Stan Musial, An American Life", by George Vescey (a well known New York sportswriter, and the older brother of NBA analyst and sportswriter Peter Vescey).

The book isn't quite what I was expecting. It fully covers Stan's life from birth until today, and is full of anecdotes from his friends, families, and quotes from Stan, and attempts, with great success, to show how the boy he was developed into the man he is, warts (surprisingly few) and all. Where the book differed from my expectations is that while baseball is a central theme in the book, there is surprisingly little descriptive baseball in it

Excellent Biography Of A Baseball Legend
By Randolph Von Dingleton on April 10, 2011
Growing up as a very young child in New York in the 50s and early 60s, I was taught by my father, grandfather and aunts and uncles about the great baseball teams in New York at that time. Most of the family were Yankee fans. I grew up with talk of Gehrig, Rush, Dimaggio, Dickey and then current Yankees such as Mantle, Skowron, Ford, Martin, Bauer and Berra. When talk turned to other teams, it was usually the Giants or the Dodgers. I learned about Mays, Snider, Reese, Hodges, Robinson, Sal "the Barber" Maglie and greats like Ott, McGraw and Matthewson. The only other ballplayers I ever heard about were Feller (my dad saw him no-hit the Yankees), Ted Williams and Stan Musial.

Feller was respected (although I do not remember seeing him play) as was Williams. Williams was considered aloof and worst of all - a member of the Boston Red Sox. This is a biography of Stan Musial by New York sportswriter George Vecsey. He (Musial) was universally loved by my family and respected - for his play and his demeanor.

This book covers Stan from his modest childhood in Donora, PA. to his receiving the Medal Of Freedom from President Obama in February of this year. It obviously covers Stan's great career with the St. Louis Cardinals (one of the best in baseball history) and is full of non-baseball anecdotes which entertained and also educated me. Stan's business ventures are covered as well - and while I knew of the feud with another famous ballplayer - I now know why.

I had no idea what the "Donora Death Fog" was until this book. How hundreds became ill and over a dozen died in industrial smog in 1948. Stan's home town