 "Summer of 49" | 2008-09-06 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1PPY7OXZ968YR |
| After reading this book you will see how great Baseball was pre 1965. The author describes perfectly the atmosphere, the players, the writers/announcers, how great the game was! |
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| "Simply put, A Great Author at his Best!!!" | 2008-08-31 |
| - Reviewed By deadsox |
The catalog of work by David Halberstam is outstanding in so many different aspects. It would seem that he is at his best when he writes about sports. While I can recommend any of his works, Summer of 49 is probably the best! Halberstam does a great job of not only painting an era but painting the giants who played in them. Williams and DiMaggio are given special care and shown to be complex and interesting characters in this drama, but then so are the role players like Johnny Pesky and Bobby Doerr.
This work also does a great job of painting a picture of the last gasp of an era when teams traveled by train, were mostly white and played by afternoon. His descriptions of the games themselves are almost like listening to them on television. For true baseball fans, this is a must read! |
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| "Baseball. Yankees vs. Red Sox. Halberstam. It's the Triple Crown." | 2008-08-25 |
| - Reviewed By billcap |
It would be be impossible to put the following three things together -- baseball, Yankees vs. Red Sox and David Halberstam -- and not have the result be a masterpiece. I've been a Yankee fan since I can first remember watching baseball in the mid-70s and lived for baseball and the Yankees.
I still remember attending my first World Series game in 1978 (Game 3) at Yankee Stadium after the memorable 1978 battle with the Sox. For me, the heroes were different that those of Halberstam, the times different and the game certainly changed by television -- but not yet by the internet. Halberstam vividly recreated the players of the earlier Yankee/Red Sox rivalries, the players I grew up collecting baseball cards, seeing at Old-Timers games and reading about. Halberstam could likely write a book about the most dull subject and inject it with a style and eloquence that would leave me wanting more. Put this type of material in his hands and I couldn't put it down. Certainly, the larger than life stars like Joltin Joe and Teddy Ballgame are brought to life, but the supporting cast adds so much to the remarkable pennant run of 1949. From Joe Coleman, Vic Raschi and Joe Page of the Yanks to Ellis Kinder, Mel Parnell and Birdie Tebbets of the Sox, late 40s baseball jumps off the pages. Television and air travel had yet to dramatically transform the game and Halberstam creates a sense of time and place that is often hard fathom in the year 2008. However, one also steps into this era when players truly played for the love of the game, didn't have the security of guaranteed contracts and the color barrier was finally being broken down and enabling a flood of amazing African-American talent into a heretofore segrated professional sports league.
Sure, we know the outcome. However, a measure of a great book or movie is that in spite of knowing "how the story ends", we remain captivated until the final word or the credits roll. This is what Halbertam does with the "Summer of 49" and in doing so creates a baseball classic. Even if you are not a Yankee or Red Sox fan, this book is a pure joy for any baseball fan and one interested in the history of America's pasttime. |
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| "Excellently Done" | 2008-08-04 |
| - Reviewed By drebbles |
"Summer of `49" focuses on the rivalry between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees as they fought for first place during the Summer of 1949. This was before the days of the wild card and first place meant a trip to the playoffs while second place meant a trip home. The two teams fought for first place all season long and (perhaps fittingly) it all came down to the last game of the season.
"Summer of `49" is an excellent book about baseball, the men that played it, the men who ran it, the men who called the games on the radio, and the fans who loved the game. Author David Halberstam focuses mostly on the players (rightfully so) and does an evenhanded job of portraying players on both teams. Halberstam provides a fascinating glimpse at players such as Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, and Ellis Kinder of the Red Sox and Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, and Vic Raschi of the Yankees. Equally interesting to read was the relationship between brothers Joe and Dom DiMaggio (Joe played for the Yankees while Dom played for the Red Sox). Also featured in the book are the managers of the Yankees and Red Sox - Casey Stengel and Joe McCarthy. Another person I found fascinating to read about and wish I had been able to hear announce games was Mel Allen.
Halberstam also provides an interesting insight into what the game of baseball was like during the 1940's. It was an age when starting pitchers pitched entire games whenever possible and relief pitchers were not specialists; a time before the designated hitter; and a time before the wild card. I was not alive then, but as a once long-suffering Red Sox fan (2004 changed all that), I could picture how frustrating that year must have been for Boston fans. Halberstam does a good job of describing game action and I could feel the anguish of the Red Sox players and fans after that final game.
Published in 1989, "Summer of '49" is a bit dated at the end (both Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams are still alive at the end of the book and Williams is developing a relationship with and yet to be manipulated by his son John Henry), but it is excellently done and I highly recommend it.
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| "A pleasant distraction." | 2008-07-28 |
| - Reviewed By njbeachbum2 |
In the foreward, Halberstam discussed how he was writing and researching this book in the midst of lecture tours to discuss weighty foreign policy issues before audiences comprised of very serious people. I got the sense that this book was a pleasurable distraction for him as it allowed him to focus on a topic related to a far simpler time and place in our history.
I think he's laid it out for the prospective reader with that comment. It's a pleasant distraction for one interested in baseball to get a sense of where the game was at a crucial crossroads both in terms of baseball and our country.
In 1949 the nature of the game was changing as was the country. It may not have been evident at the time, but in retrospect the 1950's would represent a new era. |
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 "Personality above all" | 2008-07-25 |
| - Reviewed By User: AZ85B5Q1UEH5U |
I have read better accounts of dramatic innings, games, and seasons than are found here. However, Halberstam's reporting brings to life many players who were just names to me. Jerry Coleman, Tommy Henrich, Bobby Doerr, Mel Parnell, and others played before my time, and it's clear that Halberstam spent many hours with them and grew to understand them as human beings, and not just as ballplayers.
This is not the right book for a statistics buff, I agree -- but it does bring back a very different era to a baseball fan of the 21st century.
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 "No Real Magic" | 2008-03-19 |
| - Reviewed By mtperry2 |
| Halberstam was a brilliant man whose writing only occasionally reflected that brilliance. His sports books are weak; this is probably the strongest one, but that is not saying much. |
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| "The Good Old Days" | 2008-01-21 |
| - Reviewed By User: AJDB92RQEE4BK |
| When I read this book I felt like I was a kid again. I grew up in the sixties and was not a fan of either the Yankees or the Red Sox. But, I loved baseball, enjoyed reading about the players from the past and loved it when my dad and others told me stories about baseball from the "old days". David Halberstam tells us the story of the dramatic 1949 pennant race between the Yankees and the Red Sox. He tells us not only about Teddy Ballgame and Joltin' Joe but also about the other great ballplayers on those teams. I really enjoyed learning about the contributions that were made by Reynolds, Raschi, Henrich, Kinder, Parnell and Birdie Tebbetts. Halberstam seems to know everything about the 1949 race and it appears that he was able to interview many of the players involved in the race. Halberstam is of course a great story teller and he is incredibly good at weaving cultural issues from that era into the book. Some of the items that Halberstam reveals in the book were shocking to me. This is a story from a by-gone era and you'll be surprised at a number of the business decisions that were made by the Red Sox and the Yankees and the impact of those decisions. It took me months to read the book because every couple of pages I found myself reflecting on something Halberstam wrote. For me, this was not a book to rush through. It was a book to savor. If you are over 50 you might really enjoy this book. If you are a Yankee fan, you'll love this book. And finally, if you love baseball and love to read about the old days, you'll love this book. |
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| "The 155th Game" | 2008-01-15 |
| - Reviewed By User: ASAM6EGR6JQ08 |
The late David Halberstam wrote erudite books on a wide variety of subjects. Thankfully, one of his interests was baseball. He has produced several scholarly recreations of some of the most fascinating pennant races in baseball history. In "The Summer of '49," the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees were engaged in an epic struggle for the American League title that literally went into extra innings. For Boston, it was the second consecutive season that the team tied for first place at season's end. The Cleveland Indians upset the Red Sox in 1948 and spoiled Boston's opportunity to host a city series (the Boston Braves had won the NL flag). Unlike the National League, which featured a three game playoff series format to break ties, the American League had a one game sudden death tiebreaker.
There plenty of information on the Boston/New York rivalry included in the book, but I was particularly interested in the developments that changing the game, not necessarily for the better. Television broadcasts were responsible for boosting fan interest in the baseball games and temporarily filling restaurants and taverns since few households owned their own television sets; within a few years, the same establishments were empty as people chose to remain at home watching television programs and the pace of the games was altered to permit more commercials to air. Announcers like Mel Allen became immediate local celebrities.
The 1949 season marked the arrival of Casey Stengel as the manager of the Yankees and witnessed Joe Dimaggio spending a significant amount of time on the disabled list. The Red Sox were managed by former Yankee skipper Joe McCarthy and seemed to rely upon two overworked pitchers, Mel Parnell and Ellis Kinder, almost exclusively. Both teams featured numerous All Stars, including Ted Williams, Tommy Heinrich, Phil Rizzutto and many more. Most importantly, the players in this era cared about winning. |
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| "The Title Game" | 2008-01-15 |
| - Reviewed By User: ASAM6EGR6JQ08 |
The late David Halberstam wrote erudite books on a wide variety of subjects. Thankfully, one of his interests was baseball. He has produced several scholarly recreations of some of the most fascinating pennant races in baseball history. In "The Summer of '49," the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees were engaged in an epic struggle for the American League title that literally went into extra innings. For Boston, it was the second consecutive season that the team tied for first place at season's end. The Cleveland Indians upset the Red Sox in 1948 and spoiled Boston's opportunity to host a city series (the Boston Braves had won the NL flag). Unlike the National League, which featured a three game playoff series format to break ties, the American League had a one game sudden death tiebreaker.
There plenty of information on the Boston/New York rivalry included in the book, but I was particularly interested in the developments that changing the game, not necessarily for the better. Television broadcasts were responsible for boosting fan interest in the baseball games and temporarily filling restaurants and taverns since few households owned their own television sets; within a few years, the same establishments were empty as people chose to remain at home watching television programs and the pace of the games was altered to permit more commercials to air. Announcers like Mel Allen became immediate local celebrities.
The 1949 season marked the arrival of Casey Stengel as the manager of the Yankees and witnessed Joe Dimaggio spending a significant amount of time on the disabled list. The Red Sox were managed by former Yankee skipper Joe McCarthy and seemed to rely upon two overworked pitchers, Mel Parnell and Ellis Kinder, almost exclusively. Both teams featured numerous All Stars, including Ted Williams, Tommy Heinrich, Phil Rizzutto and many more. Most importantly, the players in this era cared about winning. |
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