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.

Broad in scope and deep in analysis, this biography of Stan Musial details not only the personality and the accomplishments of the man, but artfully examines his life against the backdrop of the Great Depression, which the already-impoverished Musial family endured. It looks at Stan’s support racial integration in baseball, as well as the tragedy that struck his hometown of Donora, Pennsylvania, and claimed many lives, including his father’s. The slew of never-before-published material and revealing anecdotes gained through numerous exclusive interviews with former classmates, relatives, friends, teammates, and contemporaries allow this book to shed fresh light on the legendary Musial while making the book a must-read for all baseball fans. This updated, paperback edition includes a new, commemorative section written after Musial’s passing.

In the most comprehensive assessment of baseball legend Stan Musial's life and career to date, James N. Giglio places the St. Louis Cardinal star within the context of the times-the Great Depression and wartime and postwar America-and the issues then prevalent in professional baseball, particularly race and the changing economics of the game. Giglio illuminates how the times shaped Musial and delves further into his popular image as a warm, unfailingly gracious role model known for good sportsmanship and devotion to family.

Grzegorz Musial's Berliner Tagebuch (1989) and Taste of Ash (1992) appeared on either side of the political fault line that was the collapse of communism in Poland. Collected here, in one volume, these works present the power and urgency of one of Poland's most important young poets. Berliner Tagebuch [Berlin Diary] addresses questions of memory, guilt, and responsibility for the Holocaust, as well as the poet's desire to resist the cruelty of time. In Taste of Ash, Musial encounters the state not merely of his own country but of Western civilization too, with love poems and spiritual dialogues of intimacy and wonder.

17

Stan Musial was one of the greatest baseball hitters of all time. He played for the St. Louis Cardinals for twenty-four years and retired with a career batting average of .331 and 3,630 hits. Stan is known and respected for his many baseball records and honors. The records he set may be broken, but nobody will ever forget his devotion to baseball, his friendliness and endless good spirits, and his love of people. It is with good reason that Stan Musial is still known affectionately as Stan the Man.

This encyclopedia of the Cardinals baseball team includes extensive profiles for the top 200 players, a synopsis of the careers of every team player, stories, statistics, game-by-game accounts of every season, and information on every manager.