All posts tagged: Stan Musial

R.I.P. The Earl of Baltimore and Stan the Man

Baseball lost two members of the Hall of Fame this past weekend:  Earl Weaver and Stan Musial. There’s much that could – and has – been written about these two baseball greats.  I’ve linked to Joe Posnanski’s blogs above, but I could just as easily have sent you to read Tom Boswell’s column on The Earl of Baltimore or George Vecsey on Stan the Man. I won’t go on about Weaver’s baseball genius – decades before Moneyball made his theories all the rage – or Musial’s quiet consistency – to the point where he was widely considered to be the best ballplayer of the postwar decade. No, I’m going to focus on their nicknames. Baseball has the best nicknames. Period.  In Why Is Baseball So Much Better Than Football, Boswell touches on the topic in multiple ways, but he sums it up here: Reason #85:  Baseball nicknames go on forever – because we feel we know so many player intimately.  Football monikers run out fast.  We just don’t know that many of them as people. Then …