by Joseph Stanton (Author)

When Stan The Man Musial retired after 22 years with the Cardinals (disrupted only by a year of service with the U.S. Navy during World War II), he held 17 Major League records, 29 National League records, and 9 All Star game records. His unwavering consistency with the bat still has no peer: he hit over .300 17 times in his career, and left the game 2nd all-time in total bases, 4th in hits, 5th in RBIs, and 6th in number of games played. Despite his extreme production at the plate-achieved, in fact, only after a shoulder injury forced him to drop his duties as a pitcher-he never achieved the fame or iconic status of a Joe DiMaggio in New York or a Ted Williams in Boston; but when he collected his last hit in 1963, he departed with one of the most magical and representative statistics in the history of the game: 1,815 hits at his home ballpark, and 1,815 hits away from home. His career is a testament to concentration and integrity, and to this day Stan Musial's statistics and legacy place him among the true greats of baseball's pantheon.

Author Biography

Joseph Stanton is a professor at University of Hawaii at Manoa and a poet who has published extensively on American art, literature, and culture. His Cardinal Points: Poems on St. Louis Cardinals Baseball (2002) chronicles and celebrates over one hundred years of St. Louis Cardinals baseball. His other books include A Field Guide to the Wild Life of Suburban O'ahu, Imaginary Museum: Poems on Art, What the Kite Thinks, A Hawai'i Anthology, and The Important Books. He has published in such sports journals as Elysian Fields Quarterly, Aethlon: Journal of Sport Literature, Fan, and Spit Ball. His work has also appeared in such journals as Poetry, Harvard Review, Journal of American Culture, American Art, and Art Criticism. An associate professor at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, he teaches courses in art history and American studies.

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