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. “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 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. 1 THE DO-OVER Bud selig could see it coming. He did not know exactly which great player was going to be overlooked by the capricious impulses of baseball fans, but he was certain it was going to be somebody he loved. The commissioner had brought this agony on himself by approving a commercial gimmick he suspected might backfire. A credit card company, a major sponsor, would arrange for fans to select the top twenty-five players of the twentieth century, using computerized punch cards. The winners would be announced during the World Series of 1999. The drawback, and Selig knew it right away, was that this election could produce an injustice for some great players who had concluded their careers before the current generation of fans, before cable television began displaying endless loops of home runs by sluggers who were mysteriously growing burlier by the hour. In addition to being the commissioner, with all the crass business decisions that post entails, Selig is a legitimate fan who grew up in Milwaukee, whose mother took him to Chicago and New York, giving him a lifelong appreciation for the game. Knowing, just knowing, that some great players would be left out by mathematical inevitability, Selig did the prudent, fretting, consensual, quintessential Bud Selig thing: he arranged for an oversight committee that would add five players, making it a top-thirty team. He just knew. Selig’s premonition came true when voting closed on September 10, 1999. Pete Rose, who had been banned from baseball after blatantly denying he had gambled on games, was among the top nine outfielders on the all-century team; Stan Musial, with his perfect image, who ranked among the top ten hitters who ever played, was mired at eleventh. Stan the Man, an also-ran. “Ughhhh,” Selig groaned, a decade later, from deep in his innards. “How could they vote Pete Rose on that team before the great Stan Musial? You look at Musial’s stats, oh, oh, I can’t emphasize enough to you my regard for him, not only as a player, but when I got to know him in later years, when he came to Cooperstown. I can’t begin to tell you what a wonderful human being he is.” His voice rising to an aggrieved squeal, Selig continued: “Did he deserve to be there? Are you kidding me? That to me was the biggest shock of the whole thing. I felt an incredible sadness. I said