"Unbroken", Stan the Man, Bob Nutting, and Dick Groat

It has been awhile since I have checked in, so here goes an extended version of The Grandstander for today.

Let's start with a book, Laura Hillenbrand's #1 bestseller, "Unbroken." I just finished reading the incredible story of Louis Zamperini. Zamperini was a young member of the 1936 American Olympic track team in Berlin, who was looking to be right on track, no pun intended, to win a gold medal for the USA in the 1500 Meter race in the 1940 Olympics that were scheduled to be in Tokyo.

Of course, WWII intervened and those Olympics never took place. Zamperini enlisted in the Army Air Corps and therein lies an amazing story. In 1943, Louie's plane crashed over the Pacific, he survived for 47 days floating in a raft in the ocean, was captured by the Japanese and then spent two and one-half years in several POW camps.

It is a most compelling story of perseverance and the triumph of the human spirit, and an incredibly sad and depressing story of man's inhumanity to man. At times while reading the book, I felt like I couldn't take much more of this story, but in the end, you are in awe of what Zamperini and his fellow POW's withstood.

Not to give too much away, but here is one statistic that will give you some idea of this. In WWII, 1 in 100 American POW's held in Germany and Italy died. Of the Americans held as POW's in Japanese camps, 1 in 3 died.

No doubt, this is an important and worthwhile book, but Hillenbrand's book of a few years back, "Seabiscuit", was a lot more fun to read.

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Last week President Obama awarded the nation's highest civilian award to 15 Americans, including two athletes, Bill Russell and Stan Musial. Hard to dispute either award, and I will focus only on Musial today.

Go to a baseball encyclopedia of any online baseball reference and look at the lifetime stats for Stan Musial. When great players of his era are mentioned, the names of Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio are always brought up, but rarely do you hear Stan the Man's name in the same conversations. Why is that?

Over the course of a career that lasted 22 seasons, Musial put together 475 HR, 1,951 RBI, and a .331 lifetime BA, 3,630 hits, and seven NL batting titles. Six times he recorded an OPS in excess of 1.000, and seven other times an OPS of .900 or more. Over those 22 seasons, he averaged 86 walks a year and only 37 strike outs. In fact, in only three seasons did he strike out over 40 times, and two of those seasons were his final ones, 1962 and 1963, when he was 41 and 42 years old. And to add some perspective, in that '61 season, at age 41, Stan hit .330 with 19 HR and 82 RBI.

Of course, Stan never had a "signature event" like Williams .406 average or DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak, so perhaps that is why he gets lost in history, but what a shame that is.

How can you not say that Musial is not one of the top ten players of all time?

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News came from Bradenton yesterday that Pirates owner Bob Nutting addressed the team. This is the year, Bob said, where things will change....merely being "good" is not enough....the only acceptable goal will be the National League Championship. I also believe that

the old Nutting buzzword, "accountability" was also tossed out there. Yawn.

We've sure heard this song and dance before haven't we?

I don't believe that any mention was made that the Bucs will open the season with a payroll in the bottom five (if not the bottom one or two) of MLB. This has been another hallmark of the Nutting Era.

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I know that Dick Groat is considered by many to be a hallowed institution here in Pittsburgh. After all, Dick Vitale always has the ESPN cameras pan in on him while he, Vitale, sings his praises whenever the four letter network is televising a Pitt game. So, at the risk of committing a mortal sin, I have to say that listening to Groat in the closing moments of Pitt's loss to St. John's while out running errands on Saturday was high comedy. Oh, the foolish turnovers, oh, the fouling of St. John's best free throw shooters, and, of course, the jobbing of Pitt by the officials. I thought old Richard Morrow Groat was going to start weeping at any moment during those final three minutes when Pitt was unable to make a basket. Even the biggest homer announcer of all, Bourbon -Nose Billy Hillgrove, was a model of journalistic comportment by comparison.