Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER   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.

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9780345517074

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Reviews

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

Although Stan Musial is universally regarded as one of baseball's greatest players, he is nevertheless underrated. He played far from the national media spotlight, in America's best baseball city, St. Louis. (One reason it is the best: Musial played there.) And his amazing consistency--he got 1,815 hits on the road and 1,815 at home--made him unspectacularly spectacular. Happily, and at long last, George Vecsey has taken Musial's measure in this delightful biography of a man and a baseball era. <br>--George Will<br><br> A fascinating and profound look at the most underrated great player of all time, and one of the true gentlemen of the game, Stan Musial. No one researches a book like George Vecsey. I learned something on every page. <br>--Tim Kurkjian, Senior Writer for ESPN the Magazine and analyst for ESPN's Baseball Tonight and SportsCenter<br><br><br> From the Hardcover edition.

Author Information

George Vecsey, a sports columnist for The New York Times, has written about such events as the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics but considers baseball, the sport he’s covered since 1960, his favorite game. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including Baseball: A History of America’s Favorite Game and Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner’s Daughter (with Loretta Lynn), which was made into an Academy Award–winning film. He has also served as a national and religion reporter for The New York Times, interviewing the Dalai Lama, Tony Blair, Billy Graham, and a host of other noteworthy figures. He lives in New York with his wife, Marianne, an artist.

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