BASEBALL
Baseball notes: Organizing a future column
by David Wilson
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam wrote several books that chronicled major events in America.
He was, in my mind, an artist that used words and stories rather than paint. And he put his work, not on canvas, but on the backdrop of history.
In two of his books (Summer of ’49 and October 1964) Halberstam does an excellent job of capturing the passion and pageantry of baseball, and in doing so he held up a photograph so that America could see what she looked like years ago. In 1949 the race to get to the World Series went down to the wire in both the American League and the National League.
Halberstam’s book begins: “In the years immediately following World War II, professional baseball mesmerized the American people as it never had before and never would again. Baseball, more than almost anything else, seemed to symbolize normalcy and a return to life in America as it had been before Pearl Harbor.”
The summer of 1949 was indeed amazing, as races in both leagues went down to the final day of the season.
In the American League, the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees fought it out for the pennant. In the National League, the heated competition was between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the St. Louis Cardinals.
The symmetry between the two leagues was amazing and Halberstam vividly provided the details.
In the end, in the American League the Yankees took first place with a 97-57 record.  Boston was the closest second it could possibly be, with a 96-58 mark.
In the National League the numbers were the same. Brooklyn was 97-57.  The Cardinals were second at 96-58.
So the Dodgers and Yankees made the Series an entirely New York affair, as they had done twice before, and as they would do four more times during the 1950s.
In his book October 1964, Halberstam tells of how the Yankees, at the end of their mid-century dynasty, met the up-and-coming St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. Halberstam took a deep look in to the lives of players like Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, and Curt Flood, and simultaneously examined the social problems that they and all of America faced at that time.
For the baseball fan who likes to read, Halberstam has to be on your shelf.
David Wilson, EdD, is a communications director and former high school principal. His book Learning Every Day is available on Amazon.com. You may email him at ledauthor@gmail.com.