The Man Matched Hustle with Humility

President Obama honored Stan "The Man" Musial with the country's highest civilian honor today, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Stan, also nicknamed "Baseball's Perfect Knight," is in more ways than one, a legend. The things that he did on the field such as his unfathomable consistency (1815 career hits at home, 1815 career hits away) and humility (he was the first player to make $100,000 and possibly the last to ask for a pay cut when he didn't perform up to his own expectations) have mythic qualities.

You can watch the video of the ceremony here and here. My favorite quote is from President Obama who said, "Stan matched his hustle with humility."

Of course the St. Louis Post Dispatch has some good pieces on Stan today. This one asks St. Louis sports writers the question, "What is one lession that you think today's pro athletes could learn from the life and career of Stan Musial?" Bernie Miklasz writes, "America gives back to Musial with Medal" and "Musial and politics, a history."

If you like player biographies, I read James Giglio's, Musial: From Stash to Stan the Man a few years ago and it is very good.

Here is Joe Posnanski's SI piece on "The Man" from this past August. I usually only save a 2 or 3 issues of Sports Illustrated a year. I saved the issues with Posnanski's featured article on Musial and the issue with Joey Votto on the cover in 2010.

A well-known story about Musial is his instiable love of interacting with fans; this includes signing autographs and Stan is still doing it. If you see him out in public, I'm sure he'll give you one for free but you can buy a Stan Musial autograph from StanTheMan Inc. My wife bought me an autographed baseball one year for Christmas and it remains at the center of my collection. Funny story about that... the autograph was supposed to be a surprise but I was home alone one day and the home phone rang, the caller ID read, "Stan Musial." I thought to myself, "What the heck!?" I picked up that phone with a slightly sweaty palm to find that it was Stan's office (Stan The Man Inc.) calling to tell me that my baseball was being shipped.