Musial: From Stash to Stan the Man

Abstract

Musial: From Stash to Stan the Man is the most comprehensive assessment of baseball legend Stan Musial's life and career to date. Musial, better known as Stan the Man, was born Stanislaus Frank Musial in 1920 to Polish immigrants in Donora, Pennsylvania. As a youth, however, he went by the nickname Stashu, soon shortened to Stash, which his closest friends have continued to call him. In this first scholarly biography of Musial, 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 seeks to illuminate how the times shaped Musial and to delve further into his popular image as a warm, unfailingly gracious role model known for good sportsmanship and devotion to family. One of America's most popular professional athletes, Musial began his baseball career in 1938 as a minor league pitcher, switching to the outfield after he injured his arm. He began playing for the Cardinals in 1941, and in his twenty-two-year career with them (1941 to 1963, with an interruption for military service during World War II), he established himself as one of the game's greatest hitters, with a lifetime batting average of.331. He held major league records for extra-base hits and total bases. He also held National League records for games played, consecutive games played, times at bat, runs scored, runs batted in, and hits. Musial retired from the playing field in 1963, but returned as general manager of the Cardinals in 1967, a year in which his team won the World Series. In 1969, he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Through extensive research in newspapers, the Musial collection at the Baseball Hall of Fame Library, the Sporting News Archives, and manuscript collections at the Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy libraries, along with in-depth interviews, Giglio has provided the real story of Stan Musial as not only a baseball hero, but also a youth, a young man, a husband, and a father - a regular guy. Baseball fans everywhere will join with diehard Cardinal fans in welcoming this well-crafted and compelling biography of Stan the Man.