Yankees Baseball: The Golden Age, New York

Images of Sports

by Richard Bak

Between 1920 and 1964, the Bronx Bombers dominated the game of baseball. It was a time when baseball players enjoyed an elevated status as national icons, a time when men wearing baggy, flannel uniforms and sporting pancake gloves played for little more than “the love of the game.” In this striking and nostalgic volume featuring many rarely seen photographs, we meet the heroes that were the New York Yankees. The Yankees won 29 American League pennants and 20 World Series during this golden era, their diamond exploits thrilling generations of fans and their statistical achievements becoming familiar numbers in the lore of the game: Babe Ruth’s 714 home runs; Lou Gehrig’s 2,130 consecutive games played; Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak; Casey Stengel’s 5 straight world championships; Mickey Mantle’s 565-foot home run; and Roger Maris’s 61 round-trippers. The tradition of excellence began in the 1920s with the Murderers’ Row teams, named for their “killer” batting lineups, and continued through the early 1960s, by which time the Bronx Bombers had established themselves as the most successful franchise in sports history.

128 pages, Paperback

First published November 20, 1999

About the author

RICHARD BAK is a Detroit-based journalist and the author of twenty-five books, including 'Henry and Edsel: The Creation of the Ford Empire' and 'Peach: Ty Cobb in His Time and Ours.' He has received three ForeWord magazine Book-of-the-Year awards, the Stuart D. and Vernice M. Gross Prize for Literature, and two Emmys for his work as writer and coproducer of "Stranded at the Corner," a feature-length documentary about the fight to save Detroit's Tiger Stadium.

Reviews

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Richard Bak, Yankees Baseball: The Golden Age (Arcadia, 2000)

I've gotten used to Arcadia books being a certain way: every new chapter begins with a couple of expository paragraphs, then we get to the pictures. None of that here; I guess Richard Bak had too many pictures and too little room in Yankees Baseball: The Golden Age for exposition. (All Arcadia books, at least those I've come across, are exactly 128 pages, so that's not an unreasonable assumption.) As a result, you've got cover-to-cover pictures and captions. I'm not a big baseball fan, so a lot of this was new to me; however, I'm relatively sure that Yankees fans will get the same thrill from the nostalgia that I got from discovery. I did, however, miss the exposition; a couple of lines about Murderers' Row and their place in contemporary sports history wouldn't have gone amiss now and then, you know? But the pictures are the thing, and they're quite nice. A handsome gift for the Yankees fan in your life. ***

[Jake Beck · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was awesome, because it's about The New York Yankees. I loved this book, because I love the Yankees. It gives all of the history from when old timers where playing baseball.