Baseball Book Report Countdown #6 - Stan Musial: An American Life

It turns out that I've read a lot of books this year... A good chunk of them were about baseball, so I figured I'd do a little countdown of my favourite baseball books. So the countdown to 2012 begins with number 6:

Stan Musial: An American Life - George Vecsey

The most interesting part of this book to me is how under-appreciated Stan Musial's talents were. Not only was he a humble, quiet guy, but he also had the disadvantage of playing in a small baseball market at the time. His career numbers were comparable, and better in some cases, than Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, who both enjoyed playing in much larger markets with a wider media coverage. But Stan Musial was content (mostly) playing in St. Louis and has been a fixture with the team for all his life.

If you're looking for a companion piece to this book, check out Mel Bay Presents Stan Musial Plays the Harmonica. Not only does it offer the basics in how to play the Harmonica, it's also got his career stats listed in case you needed to know how many base hits he had in his rookie year while you're in the middle of a rousing rendition of Oh Susanna...