Summer of '49 (2006 original; edició 1989)

The summer of 1949: It was baseball's Golden Age and the year Joe DiMaggio's New York Yankees were locked in a soon-to-be classic battle with Ted Williams's Boston Red Sox for the American League pennant.

Excerpts from my original GR review (Apr 2009; read it in 2000):
- I played baseball for most of my childhood. The innocence of childhood joy stands starkly against the selfish, indulgent business of pro baseball (and all pro sports) today. However, back in 1949, even in what became "Major League Baseball", there was still a glimmer of that joy, a degree of innocence, playing the game hard and for the fun of it.
- This is a terrific panorama of that season, in which the Yankees and Red Sox fought tooth and nail, with most of the sporting nation "watching" through newsprint and radio. DiMaggio, Williams, Henrich, Doerr, Berra, Parnell, many faces of the game in that era. As noted in the book jacket, this was a time when teams traveled by train, and St Louis was still considered a western city. Most of the players of the day came from country lanes and hamlets. Many served their nation in World War II and Korea before resuming their sports passion.
- Halberstam tells a captivating, intimate story of the pennant race of just a single year, but he's written a lasting chronicle of baseball in its heyday. ( )

If you're a big baseball fan, especially from the northeast part of the United States, then you will probably love this book. There are lots of stories about baseball characters and some baseball history. However, this is very much a big collection of anecdotes centered around the author's childhood focus on the rivalry between the New York Yankees, especially Joe DiMaggio, and the Boston Red Sox, especially Ted Williams. Roughly a half-dozen other players from each of those teams is given somewhat less emphasis with other players and other teams barely mentioned at all. This extends all the way to the World Series with the Brooklyn Dodgers where only one player for that team gets much of any attention and it isn't Jackie Robinson. The best parts of the book are really the analysis of how major league baseball was managed back then, and the realization of how much it has changed to the huge business it is today. Other than that, imagine you're sitting around with similarly-minded baseball fans with nothing particularly meaningful to accomplish except be nostalgic for those good old days we keep hearing about. ( )

Narrative of the Red Sox/Yankee season of 1949 ( )

Two Halberstams in my top 10 baseball book list. This is a fantastic account of the 49 season, written by a true journalist, not a sportswriter. ( )