Overview

FOR THE LOVE OF STAN MUSIAL Set in a small Southern town during the summer of 1963, this fictional tale reflects the love affair that millions of youngsters had with the great American pastime as they played the game in the full bloom of boyhood and dreamed of one day making it to the Big Leagues. The plot centers on a quartet of youths whose friendship blossomed while playing their favorite sport. After starting a small club with its headquarters in a treehouse, the 12-year-olds make an oath and pledge to make the three-hundred-plus-mile journey on a Trailways Bus to Sportsman's Park to see their beloved Cardinals in action before they enter junior high school. They also have high hopes of meeting their favorite diamond star, legendary slugger Stan Musial, who is in his final season with the Redbirds. The tale oozes nostalgia, specifically connected to the baseball stars of the 1950s and 1960s, and serves up pure Americana as it reflects the popular culture of the era. Along the way the boys deal with bullies, poison ivy, a haunted cemetery, an ornery farmer and baseball cards. After their bus strands them halfway to St. Louis, the boys have to figure out how they are going to get there. Baseball Hall of Famer Stanley Frank Musial was signed by the St. Louis Cardinals in 1938 and joined the big league club in late 1941 as an outfielder. Playing his entire career with the Cardinals, the slugger won seven National League batting titles, played in 24 All-Star games and was three times Most Valuable Player.

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Born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, writer Ken Beck enjoyed an all-American childhood while growing up in the 1950s and 1960s in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. The love of his young life was playing baseball in organized leagues from the ages of nine to eighteen as a center fielder and third baseman. A sixth-generation Tennessean, he began his writing career in 1977 with The Nashville Tennessean, a 31-year run, where he edited the paper's Sunday entertainment magazine and wrote feature and travel stories and also had the great fortune to interview hundreds of film and TV stars. He especially enjoyed talking with his cowboy heroes of yesteryear. As an extra in a 1986 western movie, The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James, Beck portrayed a deputy who gets shot and killed by Johnny Cash. While with The Tennessean, Beck teamed with friend Jim Clark in writing The Andy Griffith Show Book, released in 1985, which would lead the duo to co-author several other books about their favorite show including the best-selling Aunt Bee's Mayberry Cookbook, which sold over a million copies. He and Clark have partnered on more than a dozen books since such as Mayberry Memories, The All-American Cowboy Cookbook and Walking On, the story of Sheriff Buford Pusser of Walking Tall fame, as told by Pusser's daughter, Dwana. Beck has been telling stories about Tennesseans from all walks of life across six decades. He has interviewed hundreds of ordinary Tennesseans who have shared their extraordinary stories with him. These include World War II veterans, school children, centenarians, farmers, businessmen, songwriters, cooks, truck drivers, gravediggers, bubble-gum blowing champions, artists, whittlers, factory workers, waitresses, preachers and convicts.The sentimental Southern boy still holds on to the baseball glove his father bought him in the fourth grade and three sweat-stained baseball caps that he wore in junior high and high school. Among the few possessions that survived his youth are his Topps and Post Cereal baseball card collections and the Stan Musial Hartland statue he received for Christmas in 1963. Over a span of twenty years, while raising their daughter and son, Beck and his wife took them on summer vacations and spring breaks to see every Major League Baseball team.

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