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Stan Musial[An American Life] (2011)

by George Vecsey(Favorite Author)

3.8 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

030793442X (ISBN13: 9780307934420)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Books on Tape

review 1: This biography was informative, but I can say with confidence that I was not the intended audience. I like Stan Musial, but I'm also under the age of 50, which means that I am part of the problem with why Stan Musial is not as respected. There were an amazing amount of disses and complaints about ballplayers after Stan's day (especially those who make millions of dollars), along with complaints about the current generation of fans, who have apparently disrespected Stan Musial to an amazing degree. At first, it was irritating, but eventually it just became funny whenever one of these sentences would pop up. It was like listening to an older, cranky relative for an extended period of time. I've never read any of George Vecsey's columns, so I don't know if this book was repre... moresentative of his writing style or not, but I would hope not. For a biography, I sure got a lot of Vecsey's viewpoints on things, and like other reviewers have said, he seemed to insert himself into the narrative quite often. To go along with this, there were a large amount of contradicting statements. First, Vecsey would rip the current ballplayers making millions, then in the next sentence, lament the fact that Musial was never able to make the same amount of money. The writing was just odd. There were jumps in time periods, sometimes within the same chapter. More often, the chapters would jump back and forth, although not in a planned way, such as in "Koufax" by Jane Leavy. More like, here's one part I wanted to tell, now here's another. Just an odd book.All that being said, Vecsey clearly did his research, and I came away knowing a lot more about Musial than I did before. The middle part of the book was much stronger than either the beginning or the end. Vecsey did present Musial's apparent goodness, even if he sometimes veered into deification. The amount of research and info alone was worth 3 stars, but the writing style dropped it down. Scott Brick did a very good job with the reading. I was never put off with his reading style, and I thought it fit the sound of players from the 40's pretty well.
review 2: this book was just awful.i recognize Vecsey is some kind of an icon in both ny and american sports circles, but this book is not even remotely a workmanlike job of setting forth the who what when where why of Stan Musials life and career. Vecsey gets facts wrong, he doesn't tell his story in a straight historical narrative, and much of what he does say seems to be rehashed from memory rather than researched from the archives of Cooperstown or from interviews with Stan himself, or with players who played with Stan.This book was enormously disappointing. When I was a kid I read a thin little volume at the public library about Stan the Man Musial, and it was just wonderful--it gave all the facts and figures, and for a long time I thought he was just the best player ever.This book does not do justice to the man from Donora, PA.There is one important contribution the book makes, but does not explore, and that is that Stan Musial played baseball in high school with Ken Griffey's grandfather. This would have been in the late 1930s when many high schools were still segregated. Griffey's dad was the football star of the HS, and presumably, was also a fine baseball player. But Vecsey, pardon the pun, drops the ball here. He has no interview with Griffey Junior, no additional photos, nothing at all. Here is a subject that everyone in the world would want to read about--how two superstars come from the same town, and how the father played with Stan the Man Musial--begging the question, HOW GOOD A BALLPLAYER WAS KEN GRIFFEY'S granddad? After all, his son was a major leaguer on the big red machine, and then his grandson was only about the best HR hitter ever in the 1990s. I mean, what did Vecsey want to write about instead? More Branch Rickey stories? I feel as if Vecsey has missed the forest for the trees here, and that another writer will pick up what has to be the real story--how a black man and a white man played together on one of the greatest HS teams of all time in Donora, PA, and gave birth to not one but three baseball superstars, and probably two HOFers. less

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