Summer of '49

by David Halberstam

With incredible skill, passion, and insight, Pulitzer Prize–winningauthor David Halberstam returns us to a glorious time when the dreams of a now almost forgotten America rested on the crack of a bat.

The year was 1949, and a war-weary nation turned from the battlefields to the ball fields in search of new heroes. It was a summer that marked the beginning of a sports rivalry unequaled in the annals of athletic competition. The awesome New York Yankees and the indomitable Boston Red Sox were fighting for supremacy of baseball's American League, and an aging Joe DiMaggio and a brash, headstrong hitting phenomenon named Ted Williams led their respective teams in a classic pennant duel of almost mythic proportions—one that would be decided in an explosive head-to-head confrontation on the last day of the season.

Genres: Sports, Baseball, Nonfiction, History, American History, Biography, New York

354 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

David Halberstam was an American journalist and historian, known for his work on the Vietnam War, politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, and later, sports journalism. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1964.

Halberstam graduated from Harvard University with a degree in journalism in 1955 and started his career writing for the Daily Times Leader in West Point, Mississippi. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, writing for The Tennessean in Nashville, Tennessee, he covered the beginnings of the American Civil Rights Movement.

In the mid 1960s, Halberstam covered the Vietnam War for The New York Times. While there, he gathered material for his book The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era. In 1963, he received a George Polk Award for his reporting at the New York Times. At the age of 30, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the war. He is interviewed in the 1968 documentary film on the Vietnam War entitled In the Year of the Pig.

Halberstam's most well known work is The Best and the Brightest. Halberstam focused on the paradox that those who shaped the U.S. war effort in Vietnam were some of the most intelligent, well-connected and self-confident men in America—"the best and the brightest"—and yet those same individuals were responsible for the failure of the United States Vientnam policy.

After publication of The Best and the Brightest in 1972, Halberstam plunged right into another book and in 1979 published The Powers That Be. The book provided profiles of men like William Paley of CBS, Henry Luce of Time magazine, Phil Graham of The Washington Post—and many others.

Later in his career, Halberstam turned to the subjects of sports, publishing The Breaks of the Game, an inside look at the Bill Walton and the 1978 Portland Trailblazers basketball team; an ambitious book on Michael Jordan in 1999 called Playing for Keeps; and on the pennant race battle between the Yankees and Red Sox called Summer of '49.

Halberstam published two books in the 1960s, three books in the 1970s, four books in the 1980s, and six books in the 1990s. He published four books in the 2000s and was on a pace to publish six or more books in that decade before his death.

David Halberstam was killed in a car crash on April 23, 2007 in Menlo Park, California.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

”DiMaggio's grace came to represent more than athletic skill in those years. To the men who wrote about the game, it was a talisman, a touchstone, a symbol of the limitless potential of the human individual. That an Italian immigrant, a fisherman's son, could catch fly balls the way Keats wrote poetry or Beethoven wrote sonatas was more than just a popular marvel. It was proof positive that democracy was real. On the baseball diamond, if nowhere else, America was truly a classless society. DiMaggio's grace embodied the democracy of our dreams.”


Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio

Joe DiMaggio was 6’2”, a big man, but a man graced with natural elegance. Off the field he dressed well, reinforcing that image of cool, calm, and collected. As one of his dates was surprised to discover she was not the focus of the male attention in the room. ”Dining with Joe DiMaggio, Ms. Cosgrove felt, gave her a remarkable insight into the male animal. The entire restaurant came to a halt for two hours. The chair of every man was angled so that its occupant could keep an eye on her date.”

It was a nation wide man crush before we knew what to call it.

On the other side of the coin was Ted Williams. As much as the press loved Joe DiMaggio they hated Ted Williams. The feeling was mutual. DiMaggio was the best player of his era, but no one would question who was the best hitter. Williams was the first to really look at hitting as a science. ”Nothing was left to chance. If he was batting and a cloud passed over, he would step out of the batter’s box and fidget until the light was just a little better. He honed his bats at night, working a bone against them to make the fibers harder. He was the first to combine olive oil and rosin in order to get a better grip on the bat. He learned to gradually decrease the weight of his bats as the summer wore on and fatigue set in.”


Ted Williams

Ted Williams was a throwback to another era. ”As he aged he became even more handsome, his face now leathery. he was crusty, outspoken, and unbending, a frontier man in the modern age, the real John Wayne. ‘He is not a man for this age,’ his old friend and teammate Birdie Tebbetts said of him. ‘The only place I would put him, the only place he’d be at home, is the Alamo.’”

DiMaggio was the Yankee Clipper and Williams was a Boston Red Sox. In the summer of 1949 those two teams were squaring off to see who would go to the World Series. To make things even more interesting Joe’s little brother Dom played for the Red Sox. His whole career was spent in the shadow of his brother, but he was one hell of a player in his own right. The Red Sox got down early in the season, at one point by eleven games, but then clawed their way back into the race. Hollywood couldn’t have drawn up the ending any better. The Yankees and Red Soxs met in a final series at the very end of the season to determine who was going to win the pennant

It was very simple…win or go home.

David Halberstam gives us an inside look, not only at the stars, but each significant player involved in this rivalry in 1949. Most of the players came from very humble origins. They all dealt with the stresses of the game different. Ellis Kinder, the great Red Sox pitcher was probably my favorite to read about. The night before he was supposed to pitch he’d stay up all night drinking and chasing women. He’d pour coffee into himself on game day to get ready to pitch. It is amazing to me that he could abuse himself that much and still be one of the premier pitchers in the league. He wasn’t alone, other players as well partied on their off hours as hard as they played on the field.


Ellis Kinder

Yogi Berra was the first ball player to get an agent. A man by the name of Frank Scott noticed that Yogi was being paid in watches instead of money whenever he would give speeches or attend events. Scott saw an opportunity for Yogi to make a lot more money and for Frank Scott to be paid for making the arrangements. The dealings between management and players was also beginning to change. The owners took advantage of the players to the point that it made a Union not only viable, but necessary. It made Tommy Henrich, who spent his whole career with the Yankees, uneasy watching this transition. Certainly some of the charm of the game was lost when players went from being blue collar workers to being millionaires.


I feel very fortunate to own this baseball card of Yogi Berra. It was one of my Dad’s.

This is also the era when owners were struggling with the allure of radio and television. There was fear that it would significantly reduce stadium attendance. Little did the owners know the revenue that would be eventually generated from, especially, television contracts.

I’ve been a long suffering Kansas City Royals fan, but last season ended the long playoff drought that had extended back to 1985. The 2014 season was so exciting it was almost worth the wait. I didn’t see these young ball players as millionaires, maybe because they didn’t act like millionaires. They played like kids with exuberance and joy that was contagious to the crowds in the ballparks and the viewers on television. The way they played, referred to as small ball, was like seeing baseball as it was played many decades ago.

From the days when players used to run out every play at first; or they would steal without giving a thought to the cost to their bodies; or lay out for spectacular catches in the outfield. These young men from the Royals played last season seemingly unaware of the stats sheet. It was all about sacrifice, hard work, and driving other teams crazy. I have been seeing more spectacular plays this year than I ever remember seeing before and not just from the Royals. It was as if the Royals woke the whole league up and reminded everyone of when a baseball game was as magical as anything Walt Disney ever dreamed up.


Eric Hosmer the talented very young first baseman for the Kansas City Royals. Here them ROAR indeed.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
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[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This summer, baseball came back to me. It had been gone a long time. I loved it as a kid. I played it, I watched it, I had no idea how lucky I was (growing up in Minnesota) to watch the Twins win two Series in a five-year period. Baseball was the only way I connected with my dad. We never did talk – and still seldom do – but we sure could pass the hours shagging flies. (There is a specific reason guys love Field of Dreams: because it is spot-on about fathers and sons).

As I grew older, I drifted away from the game. I went through a long affair with basketball (which included purchasing Jump Soles in a forlorn attempt to dunk). I flirted with hockey and quadrennial international soccer events. Ultimately, as an adult, I settled on NFL football. Football just pops on an HD television, and with limited minutes in the day, it is relatively easy to follow one team (the Vikes!) for one game a week. (Of course, if my wife lets me, I will spend all of Sunday, plus Monday and Thursday night, watching a half dozen meaningless games).

But this summer, baseball started to appeal to me again. I think it had something to do with approaching my mid-thirties, having a second child, and getting the overwhelming sensation that things – that life – was speeding out of control. Drinking helped. It always does. But I needed something more.

Baseball is the immortal game. It mimics the rhythms of life, but never ends. It’s a sport with a history that predates the Civil War. It is played without a clock, which gives you no choice but to run out the string. Baseball allows things to unfold gradually. This timelessness calmed me. When I felt my anxiety start to rise, I’d flip through the channels until I found the Kansas City Royals playing the Chicago White Sox on Fox Sports Midwest. You want to know something that’s stress free? Royals v. White Sox on a June afternoon.

In this newfound spirit, this sudden rejuvenation of love for the national pastime, I went in search of a good baseball book. Why? Because I needed something to read during midsummer tilts between AL Central bottom feeders. Because despite all the great things about baseball – the complex history; the mythic heroes; the traditions; the beer-swilling – the games also tend to be a bit boring at times.

A short, non-scientific survey of various internet lists of best-baseball-books quickly brought me to David Halberstam’s Summer of ’49. It was exactly what I was looking for, which was a bit peculiar, since I’d been looking for something quite specific. That specific things, in so many words, was heaping doses of nostalgia.

Summer of ‘49 has nostalgia in spades. If it was a color, it’d be sepia toned.

In broad strokes, Summer of ‘49 is concerned with the 1949 pennant race between Joe DiMaggio’s New York Yankees and Ted Williams’ Boston Red Sox. Spoiler Alert for time-travelers from 1948: The battle came down to a final game in which the Yankees beat the then-hapless-now-insufferable Red Sox to go to the World Series. The Yanks then handled the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series.

Really, though, Halberstam’s book is more a collection of mostly-garrulous anecdotes hung from the through-line of the season. Early on, he establishes a pattern that he follows throughout. Begin with talk of the season, describe a game or a stretch of games, and then segue into mini biographies of the various players, from the legendary, the known, and the now semi-forgotten.

There is, of course, Joltin’ Joe:

Joe DiMaggio was the most famous athlete in America. In fact, he seemed to stand above all other celebrities. Soon after he retired as a player, he returned with a group of friends to the Stadium to watch a prize fight. He was with Edward Bennett Williams, the famed trial lawyer, Toots Shor, the saloon-keeper, Averell Harriman, the politician-diplomat, and Ernest Hemingway…Suddenly, an immense mob gathered. Hundreds of kids, a giant crowd within the crowd, descended on DiMaggio demanding autographs. One kid took a look at Hemingway, whose distinctive face had graced countless magazine covers. “Hey,” the kid said, “you’re somebody too, right?” Hemingway said without a pause, “Yeah, I’m his doctor.” For even Hemingway, then at the height of his fame, could not compete with DiMaggio…

His deeds remain like a beacon to those who saw him play. More than thirty years after DiMaggio retired, Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard, one of the most distinguished anthropologists in the United States, was still fascinated by him. He had seen him play in 1949, when Gould was seven. Opening Day, he wrote…is not merely a day of annual renewal, “it evokes the bittersweet passage of our own lives – as I take my son to the game and remember when I held my father’s hand and wondered whether DiMag would hit .350 that year…”

There are also less-remembered players, like the Yankees Jerry Coleman:

Jerry Coleman, a young second baseman, was a rookie that spring, and he lived in constant terror. He had been a marine dive-bomber pilot in World War II, flying fifty-seven missions in fighters in the Solomon Islands. But spring training was harder on his nerves. He was both married and broke. He and his wife, Louise, were desperately short of money. They had driven to Florida in the flashy yellow Buick convertible of Clarence Marshall, a teammate who was just as broke as Coleman. Coleman carried in his pocket a cashier’s check for three hundred dollars, which represented his entire savings from his winter job selling clothes in San Francisco…

The hook, here, is that the pennant race of 1949 was a classic. Maybe so (I’m a non-purist in the sense that I think the Wild Card system has really goosed late-summer and early autumn baseball), but Halberstam didn't do much to convince me of this belief. Even if you don’t know the outcome, Halberstam’s digressionary style and lazy, yarn-spinning approach doesn’t do anything to build tension. (I didn't know the outcome going in, but I assumed that the Red Sox would lose. They always used to lose, and their fans were obnoxious and self-pitying. Now they always win, and their fans are obnoxious and self-glorifying).

Halberstam is a fine – and well-regarded – sportswriter. And there is a particular beauty in the way a good sportswriter can take game action, which happens in an instant, and break it down into incremental poetry. Still, Summer of ‘49 is mostly content to bask in the glories of the old ball game, a gauzy look (lit like The Natural) at a time when first pitch took place in the afternoon, when you listened to events on the radio, and when ballplayers were regular Joes taking the train between cities.

It is a soothing vision.

Of course, being the high-strung, supremely anxious, mind-racing person I am, I couldn’t help but read between the lines. There are a lot of darker undercurrents beneath the halcyon surface. The struggle between labor verses management (we are so used to the “overpaid” professional athlete today, that we tend to forget how badly ballclub owners used to screw their employees). The difficult process of integration, and the racial tensions as black men made their way into lineups.

Halberstam pays call to these topics – he is too good a writer not to – but he is mostly here to continue the myth (there are no endnotes, and so, so many of the stories related here seem too good to be true). And really, that’s fine. There is a place for the hard, honest truth, and there is a place for the legend. Here, the legend wins out every time.

[Brina · Rating 4 out of 5]

The baseball regular season has about ten games to go. It feels as though opening day was yesterday, as these six months have flown by quicker than you can say Jackie Robinson. During the year, we have lost icons and seen unattainable records broken. Although I have one eye on football season, there are still divisions to be won and an entire post season to be played. Football will not gain my undivided attention until the last out of the fall classic is recorded. As some of the pennant races are not yet decided and might go undecided until the season’s final weekend, I thought it was an appropriate time to read an account of the 1949 season that is now seventy five years in the past. David Halberstam used to be the best and the brightest until a car accident took him before his time. In addition to writing history about the time period in which he lived, Halberstam loved baseball and wrote several books about sports, baseball being his favorite sport to write about. Having read two of his sports history books before, I knew I was in for a treat as I read about a special season where the Yankees and Red Sox raced to the finish with a place in the fall classic on the line.

The Yankees and the Red Sox. The teams have been connected ever since the fated day that then Red Sox owner Harry Frazee chose to sell Babe Ruth to the Yankees in order to finance a Broadway play. At that moment, both teams’ fortunes changed as the Yankees ascended to greatness, and the Red Sox were, for lack of a better word, cursed. Maybe the Red Sox were not cursed but after not winning for over a generation, players psychologically bought into the mythology surrounding the Babe and the Red Sox and Yankees rivalry. The Red Sox, as is well known, would not win the World Series until 2004. On the other hand, the Yankees with Ruth as their leader became the most feared and loathed of teams, winning championships over the next three decades. Ruth lead to Gehrig who lead to DiMaggio and eventually Mantle, and all players and fans around the league grew to loath those damn Yankees. The 1940s brought change to both teams. Lead by Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, the best players in baseball at the time and timeless icons, the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry grew to new heights. The two men became forever linked by their pursuit of all time records in 1941 and then when they left to serve their country during World War II. After the war brought a country at flux, but DiMaggio and Williams returned to lead their teams. During the late 1940s both teams factored in every pennant race, with the Red Sox playing in the fall classic in 1946 and the Yankees winning in 1947. By 1949, both teams had reloaded and were ready to battle for the pennant in what would be a season for the ages.

In 1949 David Halberstam was a fifteen year old who loved school and baseball. He was staunchly a Yankee fan and his favorite player was Tommy Henrich, a link to the past of great teams lead by Gehrig. While clearly a Yankee home, Halberstam’s uncle Harry had season tickets to Red Sox games, and during his adolescence, young David made trips to Fenway Park and learned to respect the Red Sox as well. His allegiance was to the Yankees thanks in part to listening to games on 1010 radio which featured the broadcasts of Mel Allen and a young Curt Gowdy. Baseball was made to be broadcast over the radio, and the early broadcasts told such compelling stories that fans listening at home felt as though they were at the ballpark. Owners believed that radio would lead to fans staying home and following the game over the airwaves instead, but the late 1940s was an era never to be replicated with players as DiMaggio and Williams and Bob Feller in the American League and the integration of negro league stars lead by Jackie Robinson in the National League. Fans would listen to their favorite broadcasters at home, but they went to the ballparks in record numbers as well. In 1949 radio gave way to a new medium called television, which broadcasted the World Series for the first time thanks to sponsorship from Gillette razors. Both the Yankees and Red Sox vied to be the American League representative in what would prove to be a groundbreaking World Series.

The Yankees were built on pitching, and the Red Sox featured superior hitters. In New York, DiMaggio missed the first two months of the season with a foot injury. He was still Joe DiMaggio who kept a small inner circle and frequented Toots Shor restaurant, but he was clearly in the twilight of his career, passing the torch to Mantle the next season. Tommy Henrich picked up the leadership of the Yankees in DiMaggio’s absence, but he was not Joe DiMaggio. The Yankees maintained a lead over the rest of the league thanks to the pitching of Reynolds, Raschi, and Lopat. Once DiMaggio returned, his presence catapulted an already dominant Yankee team into the driver’s seat of the American League, never to look back. Meanwhile, in Boston, June found the Red Sox twelve games behind the Yankees. Their pitching was not as dominant, and Ted Williams could not do everything himself. If the one and two hitters Dom DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky got on base ahead of him, it changed the complexity of the game because pitchers could no longer pitch around him. While pitchers tired later in the season, the Red Sox hitters came alive and made a pennant race out of it while DiMaggio missed more time with pneumonia. The season would come down to the final weekend with the teams separated by a mere one game with two left to play.

Having the knowledge that the Rwd Sox would not win the World Series until 2004 and that the Yankees started a streak of five straight titles in 1949, the series at Yankee Stadium was a foregone conclusion. In some aspects of the game, the Yankee mystique took over; I have seen it myself many times over the years. Teams fear the Yankee pinstripes and stadium more than the actual team, which leads to mental errors and Yankee victories. The Yankees would win on a fluke hit, but, to be fair, the players still had to demonstrate mental awareness, which inevitably lead to a Yankee victory. Ted Williams noted that this was the most painful loss of his career, and he would never again play in a fall classic. The Yankees lead by DiMaggio, superior pitching, and a young Yogi Berra, would defeat the Dodgers in the World Series, which, as aforementioned, reached thousands of Americans on television. Baseball in many regards would never be the same after the 1949 season as television moved the game into its golden age. As an impressionable teen, David Halberstam cemented his allegiance to the Yankees after that 1949 season. It was a season for the ages, and hopefully the last week of this compelling season measures up to that timeless pennant race from three quarters of a century ago.

4.5 stars

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/2

This is a MAJOR LEAGUE book in my baseball library.
Availability. IN PRINT
Type. PLAYERS/ERA
Use. READ
_explanation_


David Halberstam (1934-2007) was a well-known journalist and writer. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his Vietnam reporting for the New York Times.

The Summer of ‘49 is about the American League pennant race of that year between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.

Although the author researched the book in usual ways, his main research consisted of interviewing scores of people mentioned in the book. The interviewees (not all “guys”) are listed in the Acknowledgements, in the following categories: Boston players (19), New York players (22, Berra not included!); Players from other teams (9), Executives, reporters, announcers, and publicists (30), and Others (24).


Introductory chapters

In his Prologue, the author describes the 1948 AL pennant chase. According to Bill James this was the third best pennant race of the 1940s. (He lists the ’49 AL race as number 6.) In ’48, with one week to go in the season, three teams were tied with identical 91-56 records: the Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Cleveland Indians. At the end, a one-game playoff was needed between Boston and Cleveland, which the Indians won.

After the Prologue, the first three chapters (untitled, like all in the book) form a long introduction to the main story. Halberstam writes about the baseball of the 1940s, particularly the differences between the prewar, war, and post-war years, and sets the stage for the renewal of the Boston/Yankee rivalry in 1949. A lot of time is spent introducing the two main players: Boston’s Ted Williams, the Yankee’s Joe DiMaggio. We’re told of the contrasting levels of confidence between the Boston and New York teams as they arrived for spring training that year. The Red Sox felt confident, knowing they’d beaten New York the previous season, and had just missed out playing in the World Series. The Yankees, on the other hand, were facing unknowns. A new manager, Casey Stengel, was taking over the team; their catcher, Yogi Berra, was still an unproven commodity, who had yet to gain the confidence of the starting staff; and most critically, their superstar center fielder, DiMaggio, started the season sidelined by a November operation on his feet for bone spurs. The operation had not fixed the problem, and by February the pain had returned. When he was still unable to play in early April, with the season’s start fast approaching, he was flown to Johns Hopkins hospital for an emergency operation. No one had any idea when he might be ready to play, or how well and how often he could play.

This was critical for the Yankee’s chances, or at least so thought the pundits. Early in the spring, the experts were figuring the Yankees and Red Sox as equal favorites for the 1949 pennant. But by the time the season started, with DiMaggio now shelved for an undetermined amount of time, a poll of 112 major league sports writers was able to muster only a single vote for the Yankees winning the pennant.

These chapters also introduce Halberstam’s narrative style, sort of Shandy-esque. He takes the reader on a meandering voyage, detouring up a sidetrack, wherever his own interest takes him. This sounds disconcerting, but not at all. The author knows what he wants to write about, and knows that this isn’t rocket science, a political narrative, nor a sociological thesis. It’s not Vietnam, it’s baseball, the reliving (for him) of an exciting part of his childhood, and that’s the spirit he writes it in.


The Season

The next ten chapters tell Halberstam’s wandering story of the season, up to the final series. They follow the course of that summer in a fairly straight chronological order, but much of the material is tale-telling that extends not only back in time but forward (“in later years so and so would always remember …”). Every few pages, there may be a vague reference to a date, or a comment about the standings. So I'll summarize that aspect of the story right now in my own words.

The Course of the Campaign

In the early weeks of the season the Red Sox had started slowly, while the Yankees, despite the absence of DiMaggio, got off to a good start. On June 1 they had a 4 ½ game lead on the second place Boston team. But by July 4, the Sox had dropped to fifth, 12 games behind the Yanks. Then Boston began to chip into the lead.

Ted Williams had been adamant with his teammates that this would happen, that they couldn’t give up. Williams noticed the Yankee pitchers were beginning to struggle a bit, as the heat of the summer wore on.

Boston was a hitter’s team, not a pitcher’s team, and July and August belonged to the hitters. Playing constantly in hot, muggy weather became a test of the mind over an unwilling, sluggish body. Sometimes on those suffocating days Williams would feel worn down… Then he would look at the opposing pitcher. It is hard on me, he thought, but he’s the one really paying for it. The heat, he knew, would disappear for him in the sheer pleasure of baseball.

By August 1 Boston had regained 3rd place, 6 ½ back. On Tuesday, August 8th, the Yankees opened a three game series in Boston, still ahead by 6 ½. The Sox took two out of three, and though still in third behind the Indians, were now 5 ½ back. (From this point in the season Boston was to go 37-14 over their final 47 games.)

On September 1 the Red Sox were in 2nd, 3 games behind. I’ll leave it there for now.


Anecdotes

Any self-respecting baseball book would be remiss without a stock of anecdotes, about the teams, players, managers, umpires, - whatever the author talks about. Halberstam’s book is no exception, and he strikes a fine balance between the occasional (usually amusing) anecdote and simply too many.

I’ll just summarize briefly a few of the anecdotes I enjoyed, then give a longer account of one.

Joe Trimble, of the New York Daily News, was a constant critic of a part time Yankee, Nick Etten. “One time Etten left his glove near first base during an inning [this was often done in those days] and a foul ball rolled into it. Trimble wrote that ‘Etten’s glove fields better without Etten in it.’ “

Yogi Berra, when introduced to the “important writer” Ernest Hemingway, is said to have remarked, “Good to meet you. A writer, huh. What paper you with, Ernie?”

Ted Williams used to say that when he was to face a really tough pitcher, he might think about him for 24 hours before the game. But for Bob Feller, “I’d think about him for three days.”

Phil Rizzuto’s teammates know that he was afraid of almost anything that moved. Gags played on Rizzuto included putting a snake in a gift-wrapped package addressed to him; filling his bunk on the train with live crabs; tying a live bird inside a drawer where he puts his valuables while dressing for the game. One gag involved stuffing the glove he had left on the field during a rain delay with thirty night-crawlers. When he put it on, “It was like someone had given him an electric shock. He threw the glove high into the air and did what looked like an Indian war dance. Both teams were incapacitated with laughter.” Those were the days, right?

Finally, here’s another about Ted Williams. Once Hal Newhouser, with two strikes on Williams

came in sidearm with a cheap curve for strike three. Williams was enraged. Newhouser was a great power pitcher, but Williams felt that this time he had struck him out by cheating. It was a matter of pride, as if he had ruined a no-hitter of Newhouser’s by bunting. “A dinky nickel curve,” he said coming back to the bench. “I’ll bet any son of a bitch on this bench I hit one off him today.” It was a bet that no one cared to take. Inevitably, his next time up, he hit a home run.

By the way. Though there are many anecdotes about Williams in the book, there are few about DiMaggio. Why? I would guess it’s because DiMaggio said so little that there wasn’t much to work with. In fact one gets the impression that the few that Halberstam mentions are worthy of telling not so much because of what Joe said, but just as much because he said anything.

And this brings us to …


b>The main players

Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams. Destined to be locked together in baseball history by their accomplishments in the 1941 season. Williams (age 22), the last Major League player to bat over .400 for a season; DiMaggio (27) setting the inconceivable record of getting a hit in 56 consecutive games, perhaps the sports record least likely to ever be broken.




These two players weave in and out of Halberstam’s story in every chapter. If you don’t want to read anything about either one of them, don’t read this book.

I’ll mention here just one comment about each that I found interesting.

Halberstam, after telling us about the reticence and actual shyness of DiMaggio, says that this era in baseball, and in America, was very much an advantage to DiMaggio’s legend. It was, he says, DiMaggio’s good fortune

to play in an era when his better qualities, both athletic and personal, were amplified, and his lesser qualities simply did not exist. If he did something magnificent on the field, he was not on Johnny Carson the next night, awkward and unsure of himself, mumbling his answers … Rather, he had Mel Allen to speak for him. It was the almost perfect combination: his deeds amplified by Mel Allen’s voice.

Moving from DiMaggio (and the Yankee broadcaster Mel Allen) to Williams, here’s Halberstam on a remark made by Williams’ friend, the Red Sox sportscaster Curt Gowdy.

He was … the least bigoted man of his time. He could not comprehend judging a player by his color or background. Baseball, he thought, was a universe of its own – a better one, where talent was the only thing that mattered. Gowdy remembered him as the first person in baseball to predict the coming importance of black athletes in American sports…. His speech at Cooperstown in July 1966, when he was elected to the Hall to Fame, is notable for its generosity to Willie Mays: “The other day Willie Mays hit his five hundred twenty-second home run. He has gone past me and he’s pushing, and I say to him, ‘Go get ‘em, Willie.’ Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel… I hope some day Satchell Paige and Josh Gibson will be voted into the Hall of Fame as symbols of the great Negro players who are not here only because they were not given the chance…”

Paige – yes, 1971. Gibson – yes, 1972.


The Season - Denoument

On Saturday September 24 each team had 8 games remaining.

Note: Thanks to the author’s meandering ways, I eventually repaired to the web to get the precise details sorted out. See http://www.baseball-reference.com/tea...

This weekend the Yankees played a two-game series at Boston. They came into the series with a 2-game lead. They left town tied, the Red Sox having beat them 3-0 and 4-1.

The very next day, Monday 9/26, the teams played again, in Yankee Stadium. I assume this game was probably a make-up for a game rained out earlier in the season. Boston won again, 7-6. The Red Sox had their first lead of the season.

Now each team had a three game series against a weaker opponent, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. The Yankees played at home against the Philadelphia Athletics, who were actually 9 games above .500, in fifth place; the Red Sox traveled to Washington for a set against the last-place Senators, who were then 48-101.

Each team was able to win, but not sweep, their series. The Red Sox long remembered their loss on Wednesday, when the Senators beat them 2-1 in the bottom of the ninth. This game became known as the “Scarborough game” to Red Sox nation. (The following is an edited version of Halberstam’s text.)

Scarborough was a right-handed pitcher, and he was nothing if not smart and crafty. Not only did he give the Boston right-handers a difficult time, but he was poison to Ted Williams. He could decoy Williams better than any other pitcher in the league… Forty years later Williams paid Scarborough the ultimate accolade: He said that he probably chased more balls out of the strike zone with Ray Scarborough than with any other pitcher in the League.

Scarborough was going for his thirteenth victory against only eleven defeats. Not bad for a team with a 48-101 record. He was good that day, giving up only four hits, but the Red Sox hurler, Chuck Stobbs was better, taking a 1-0 lead into the ninth inning. A short leadoff single, then a sacrifice, then an infield hit put runners at the corners with one out. Then another hit went through the infield, between third and short, and the game was tied. Ellis Kinder came in, faced one batter, and gave up a hit to load the bases. Mel Parnell came on to pitch. On his third pitch the Senators tried a squeeze, or a steal of home. Whatever it was, it went awry. Boston’s catcher, Birdie Tebbetts, tagged out the runner at home, officially caught stealing, for the second out, as the runner on second took third.

Parnell had the next hitter 1-2, but on his fourth pitch, “he simply put too much on it. It might have been a great pitch, but it broke too much. It was low and bounced wide of the plate.” It got by Tebbetts, was ruled a wild pitch, and the game was over. Ted Williams had been held hitless.

Now, the final weekend. The Red Sox came into Yankee Stadium, two games left, a one-game lead. Still, Boston only had to win one game to wrap up the pennant. But the Yankees felt confident that they could win two. Halberstam draws out his telling of the final series to almost twenty pages, but not me. There’s just too much stuff to choose from, so I’ll cut to this.

Saturday The Red Sox pulled out to a 4-0 lead, but the Yankees, with 2 runs in both the fourth and fifth innings, tied it up. Joe Dobson came on to pitch for Boston. New York scored one in the bottom of the eighth off Dobson. Meanwhile the Yankee’s great relief pitcher Joe Page had relieved in the third inning and threw the rest of the game (6.2 innings) giving up only one hit. 5-4 Yanks.

Saturday night fans streamed to the Stadium all night long to buy tickets and camp out. The game was close for seven innings. Ellis Kinder started for Boston, gave up a run in the first, but then settled in. His opponent, Vic Raschi, was a little better, and at the end of seven it was 1-0 Yanks. In the top of the eighth Tom Wright had pinch hit for Kinder and walked, but the Sox hadn’t scored. Then in the bottom of the eight Mel Parnell and Tex Hughson gave up four runs between them, the last three on a two-out bases loaded bloop double by Jerry Coleman – a hit that Coleman felt deeply ashamed of for a long time afterward, thinking it had made him an undeserving hero.

The “extra” three runs seemed to make a difference, because the Sox put three on the board against Raschi in the ninth. But that was it. The Yankees had won the pennant, 5-3.

In the World Series the Yankees met the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Dodgers had become a very good team in recent years. In 1949 both teams had finished 97-57.

Brooklyn’s team in 1949 featured Gil Hodges, Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Carl Furillo, and Roy Campanella, along with pitchers Don Newcombe, Ralph Branca, and Preacher Roe. Wow. Do those names bring back memories to me, even though in 1949 I’d never heard of them.

The Yankees countered with Rizzuto, Coleman, Henrich, Berra, Gene Woodling, Bobby Brown, Hank Bauer, and of course DiMaggio, with pitchers Raschi, Allie Reynolds, Tommy Byrne, Eddie Lopat, and Joe Page.

Game 1 was one of the greatest pitching duels that had been seen in the World Series. Both starting pitchers went the distance. Allie Reynolds was the winner for the Yanks (playing at home), giving up only two hits. Don Newcombe took the loss for the Dodgers, when he gave up a lead-off homer by Henrich in the bottom of the ninth to lose 1-0. “Allie Reynolds later thought he had pitched as well as he did in his two subsequent no-hitters; and Newcombe, asked to name the best game he ever pitched, cited that World Series game.”

The Dodgers came back in the second game with a 1-0 victory of their own, Preacher Roe beating Vic Raschi. But when the Series moved to Brooklyn, the Yanks gradually asserted their dominance, winning 4-3, 6-4 and 10-6.

The Series win was the first for Casey Stengel. And when the Yanks followed it up by winning again in 1950 and 1951, it marked the first time a team had ever won three WS Championships in a row. They made it five in a row by winning again in 1952 and 1953.


Post game wrapup

Well, there’s many more things I was going to relate about this great book. But space runs short. The Yankees sense of entitlement to a WS check; racism in the AL, on the Yankees, and on the Sox; Don Newcombe on racism; A different era, a different time – an older one fading into a newer (pitchers not drinking anything during a game, for fear of “bloating”; the coming of night baseball, TV, travel by plane, agents, and of course Black ballplayers); the press and reporters in the two cities; Toots Shore; the radio and TV announcers.


and finally …

Halberstam writes of John Updike’s farewell to Ted Williams in the New Yorker, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu”. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/196...

He also writes about Paul Simon, in 1966, writing the lyrics for the score of The Graduate.

He had sought for one song an image of purity in a simpler America. His mind flashed to the great Yankee player. He wrote down, completely by instinct, the words, “Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you …” He knew immediately that it was right – a lament for another time…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDlAM... (3:00)



President George Bush, Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio – 1991
The New York Daily News

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[Sweetwilliam · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s just something about baseball. It can be slow and stretches of games can be absolutely boring but still, it draws me in. There is nothing more that I would rather do than, on a beautiful summer night, be with my friends, in the stands, watching a baseball game drinking a $13 beer. It has the power to hypnotize me.

I knew nothing of the Summer of ‘49 and what Halberstam describes as “baseball’s most magnificent season” but I read this book because I love baseball and I am awed by the games historic roots and I know how good an author David Halberstam is. (I didn’t realize that Halberstam is a huge Yankees fan.)

I knew how good Ted Williams the hitter was but I guess I never appreciated just how good a ball player Joe DiMaggio was. He started the season on crutches and in one day, cast them aside, and literally started playing again and playing well.

It was the early television era and I liked how the author described how TV coverage changed the game. Fall balls caught in the stands now required a spectacle for the cameras and umpires never again, just called balls and strikes. Everything became a show for the cameras.

There were also some customs common to the game that surprised me. One interesting and noteworthy custom was to leave your baseball glove out on the field between innings. I cannot imagine how this custom came to be? Did baseball, in its infancy, share gloves and that’s how this all started? At any rate, all the players, except for the pitcher and the catcher, would just toss their gloves on the playing field and go into the dugout to take their bats. Can you imagine this happening today? It was a problem and MLB implemented a controversial new rule to put an end to this practice in 1954.

The book is full of surprising little anecdotes about baseball. Some young readers may be surprised to find out that only the teams with the best record from the National League and the American League, after playing a mere 150+ games, squared off in the World Series. Today 12 teams enter into a playoff system that diminishes the importance of the pennant race.

This would be a good read for baseball junkies to pass the time during the winter.

[Brian Eshleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very much enjoyable. Makes his brief biographical sketches of the people involved with telling the tale of it once a memorable season and a past era. Baseball before millionaires, night games, and widespread television. Well worth reading.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just catching up on some books I read when I first joined Goodreads but never wrote a review for. "Summer of '49" was a big surprise for me because it was written by David Halberstam who received a Pulitzer Prize some years before for his book about the geniuses who got us into the Vietnam War in "The Best and the Brightest". The Yankees were undergoing change in 1949. Casey Stengel was their new manager, an old timer with some new managerial ideas like the platoon system: right-handed hitters batted against left-handed pitcher and left-handed hitters batted against right-handed pitchers. Players hated it - they wanted to play every day. But Casey would go on to win the World Series five years in a row and there isn't a manager alive that doesn't use the platoon system in one form or another.

Joe DiMaggio was nearing the end of his career and similar to 7 out of the previous 8 seasons he was injured to start the season. He returned in late June for a series against the Red Sox and homered in 3 straight games. But as he was nearing the end of his career Yogi Berra was just beginning his. Much is made of Yogi-isms (nobody goes to that restaurant anymore - it's too crowded) which make him sound like a dumbbell. But my favorite segment of the book shows what a baseball genius Yogi was. It was late in the season and late in the game. The other team had the bases loaded, one out, and it was starting to get dark (it gets late early here). The left-handed batter hit a line drive to right that looked like the right fielder was going to catch it. All the runners retreated to their bases. But when the ball dropped in front of the fielder all hell broke loose in the darkening stadium. Runners started running belatedly to the next base. The right fielder realized he had a play at home and fired a strike to the catcher, Yogi, who stepped on the plate and threw to another base for a double play. But the umpire yelled, "Safe!" "Wattya mean safe?" roared Yogi. "You never tagged him," said the Ump. "It's a force play!" Yogi roared back. The umpire looked around, realized Yogi was right, and called the runner out. Double play, inning over. Yogi was the only player in the ballpark who understood the situation on the field.

The book's climax recounts the last two games of the season - Red Sox up by a game with two to play at Yankee Stadium. I mentioned earlier that the Yankees won five straight World Series so, guess who won those last two games? But there's nothing more exciting than a tight pennant race - the following year saw an NL race between the Dodger and the Phillies down to the last day. And the 1951 race between the Dodgers and the Giants will be told as long as kids still play baseball. But David Halberstam shows that the "Summer of '49" holds its own against any pennant race.

[Don Gerstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author David Halberstam transports us back to a time when there were no divisions, only two eight-team leagues. With the end of World War II and the advent of television, baseball was poised to become a major part of Americana. Some of the greatest players ever were playing in 1949, among them Boston’s Ted Williams and the New York Yankees’ Joe Dimaggio.

Mr. Halberstam begins the book in 1948, a year that featured a three-way battle for the league title between the Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Cleveland Indians. All three teams were knotted with one week to go in the season, and when the dust settled, the Indians and Red Sox were tied and headed for a playoff game. Unfortunately for the Red Sox, they lost the game 8-3 and had to wait until 1949. Understandably, Boston considered 1949 to be “their year.”

The rest of the book takes the reader into the baseball season of 1949, covering the pennant race that would essentially be about two teams, Boston and New York. Like a great novelist, the author fleshes out the players that were part of that season, sharing stories and anecdotes. Mr. Halberstam also gives us a fascinating view of baseball and its fans 70 years ago, how America viewed its teams, and the relationship between sports reporters and the teams. Along the way, there are many pieces of information for today's baseball fans, such as the first player to have a representative (whose first job was to have a player paid for speeches in money rather than watches) as well as the backgrounds of many of yesterday’s stars.

The book ends with another exciting finish to the regular season and includes the World Series with the National League winner, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Mr. Halberstam then takes the time to tie everything up in a nice package with a what-happened-to-them-later chapter, a fitting end to a great book. This is definitely a gem for baseball fans. Five stars.

[Pris robichaud · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goddamm, But Playing Baseball Is Fun, 9 Aug 2007



"Old-time baseball players and fans love to denigrate the modern ballplayer. "Baseball today is not what it should be," one old-timer once wrote. "The players do not try to learn all the fine points of the game as in the days of old, but simply try to get by. They content themselves if they get a couple of hits every day or play an errorless game... It's positively a shame, and they are getting big money for it, too."
Bill Joyce, 1916 Ballplayer

'The Golden Age of Baseball' began when players returned from the war until 1958, when the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants decided to continue their rivalry in California. That time saw many of the most memorable and significant events in the game's history: in 1947, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier; that same year, the second Yankee Dynasty began with its first of ten pennants and eight championships in a twelve-year span; in 1951, Bobby Thomson hit the "Shot Heard 'Round the World" to win the pennant for the Giants; in 1954, Willie Mays made his spectacular World Series catch; in 1956, Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in World Series history.

For those of us who are Boston Red Sox or New York Yankee fans, one of the biggest baseball rivalries in history, 'Summer of '49' explains much of the history and romance of these two teams. David Halberstam brings to us the glories, the rivalaries, the drinking, the social and personal stories of the players on both sides. The subject is the pennant race of 1949 between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox which wasn't decided until the last game of the season. Is there really any value to another book telling us what a legend Joe DiMaggio was, or what a great hitter Ted Williams was, or what a great team the Yankees were? Yes,indeedy.1949 was the perfect year, because it marked a turning point in the history of American sport, which is one reason why David Halberstam wrote this book. Baseball was the number one sport, but professional basketball and football were beginning to gain acceptance. Television was just beginning to make its mark. The impact of black ballplayers was only beginning to be felt.

David Halberstam brings us the day to day spotliughts of the Red Sox and Yankees for an entire year, from the end of the 1948 season through 1949. During the summer of '49, the two teams had one of the classic pennant races of all time. The Sox struggled at the beginning, while the Yankees, took a commanding early lead. But Boston chipped away at the lead until the final day of the season, when the two teams met to decide the pennant. Sound familiar? David Halberstam reveals the characters and gives us a glimpse of baseball during The Golden Age. He interviewed almost every living member of those teams and several people on the outside--fans, broadcasters, baseball executives, writers, relatives of players--over a hundred in all. The one interview he couldn't get, was from the most important member of the Yankees: Joe DiMaggio.

Each team was made up of twenty-five men, plus perhaps ten or twelve others who played a little. We are introduced to every one of them, the drinkers, womanizers, country boys, city boys, the marginal players for whom 1949 will be their only season of glory. We feel a part of the team, traveling with them between games. And at the end of the book, he tells us what has become of them.

In the conclusion, David Halberstam tells us how enjoyable it was to write this book, to interview his idols, to do research that many would consider fun. "I was the envy of my male friends who shared my enthusiasm for baseball in those years. Caught up in the more mundane tasks in journalism or Wall Street or the law, they would gladly have traded jobs with me."

"But probably the best reasons for Halberstam to choose 1949 were, first, that it was a terrific, dramatic pennant race between two hated rivals; and, second, perhaps most importantly, as he explains in the author's note, Halberstam was fifteen years old that summer and a devoted Yankee fan. The men he describes in his book were his heroes, and he lived and died with the fortunes of his favorite players." David Martinez

David Halberstam is gone now. However, his writing will live on, and those of us who loved his writing will remember him well.

What Summer of '49 does for me is to renew my love for baseball, and in particular, my love for the Boston Red Sox. Ted Williams, after reluctantly leaving the batting practice cage, once said, "Goddam, but this is fun. I could do this all day--and they pay me for it."

Highly Recommended. prisrob 8-05-07

[Harold Kasselman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm so glad I finally sat down and read this classic; there is no disappointment here. What a fabulous read. It has all a baseball fanatic could ever want.
1949 was a bit before my first MLB ball game interest but this book, written 40 years after the season with the aid of most of the principle players, captures brilliantly one of the best pennant chases in history between two of the greatest rivals of all time: the Yankees and the Red Sox. At a time when baseball and American culture was on the verge of a monumental change because of television, this season was still played out in the imaginations of radio listeners.
I laughed out loud at some of the anecdotes about Ellis Kinder, Casey Stengel, Phil Rizzuto, and Yogi Berra. I felt like I got to know some of the greats from an earlier generation that I had seen only for a short time after that glorious season. I loved getting to know Bobby Doerr, Kinder and Allie Reynolds, Joe McCarthy, Eddie Lopat, Vic Raschi,, Dom DiMaggio, and Johnny Pesky. I already knew plenty about Teddy Ballgame(although I did learn how he got that monicker here for the first time)and Joe DiMaggio.
I had expected the book to be more cerebral, but Halberstam writes as if he were that 15 year old kid who shared that exuberance he experienced in 1949 with the reader. You feel his love for the game and for the players especially the Yankees. The contrast between the disciplined, stoic, and money driven Yankees and the more laid back fun loving Red Sox is evident. Perhaps as Birdie tebbets opined, the difference between the two great teams may have boiled down to the Yankees having had Joe Page as their great reliever.
One item left me sad but not surprised. The only player who refused to meet Halberstam for an interview was Joe DiMaggio. The most graceful of all players apparently couldn't be gracious to one of America's best writers. Maybe there was no money in it for him.

[Marco Leecock · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was well written, boyishly optimistic, and some chapters truly flew by, but the narrative of the book really filtered me out. I understand I have a Red Sox bias, and a pretty uncompromising Yankee prejudice, but it just wasn’t a story I could get starry eyed about.

Call me delusional but the Yankees, the protagonist of this story, are completely devoid of charisma. Halberstam tries to make them likable, but how can you make a team of stoic baseball robots, playing for the sports club equivalent of Standard Oil, a team to root for? The Yankee chapters kept going on about hard work, fundamentals and grit, it was all very dull. The deification of Joe DiMaggio in this book is a perfect representation of my yankee problem in this book. He was an American icon, and obviously someone the author looked up to but every single thing DiMaggio did was given the best possible light or otherwise interpreted as a charming quirk. For example, instead of claiming DiMaggio might have been vain, borderline narcissistic, he was described as wanting to always do his best as he would never want to let the fans down. I know Mantle, Monroe, and Berra might have a different story about DiMaggio’s wholesome professionalism.

Despite the yankee rant I am not looking for cynicism from this book, maybe just a bit more honesty, because when this book is being honest it is amazing! I was absolutely devouring the chapters on the Red Sox, like a horror show I couldn’t look away from. Halberstam was upfront that Ted Williams was a PSYCHO, and that was WAY more interesting to read about than DiMaggio never having to make reservations at restaurants because he was so beloved. Just how backwards, ignorant, and nonsensically that Red Sox clubhouse was ran made for a much more engaging read. Dom DiMaggio had something to prove living in the shadow of his brother, Pesky and Birdie were always lurking around stirring the pot, Yawkey was being an esoteric weirdo somehow assembling this mismatched teams with obvious and avoidable weaknesses. Outside of the Red Sox as well, the chapter focusing on racial injustice was a much needed acknowledgement and change of pace. The dodgers cameo at the end had infinitely more charisma than all the Yankee chapters combined. An integrated team, with a chip on its shoulder playing for black America, very compelling. So again I ask, how on earth am I supposed to get excited to root for the Goliath over David? Can someone who isn’t a Yankee fan really get romantic about that?

[Joseph Sciuto · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful book, beautifully written, detailed, and informative novel about an era in America where the game of baseball was America's National Pastime. The book centers around the 1949 baseball season that eventually lead to a one game playoff between the NY Yankees and the Boston Red Sox for the American League Pennant. The rivalry between both teams was legendary for way over eighty years.

Mr. Halberstam takes us through the entire season, with background from previous seasons and commentary on the future of the game after the 49 season. He gives us insights into many of the most famous baseball icons of all time: Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Allie Reynolds, Tommy Henrich, Ted Williams, Dom DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Bobby Doerr.

He gives us an unbiased look at the management and owners of each team, how television changed the fans' perspectives, and how the switch from traveling by train to airplanes changed the comradeship between players that existed on the long train rides compared to the one hour flight from one destination to another. He talks about the abrupt transformations that announcers had to go through to adapt from the medium of radio to TV.

In one telling and sad story, he tells how both the Yankees and Red Sox had been scouting this amazing, young talented black player by the name of Willie Mays. And even though, they had no doubt that one day he would be great they both passed on him because he was black and they didn't think their fans were ready to accept a black player.

Both the Yankees and Red Sox were among the last teams to recruit black players, and many other American league teams weren't that willing either. This would lead to the disparity between the National League and the American League in the 60's and 70's and nearly two decades of National League dominance. Mays, Jackie Robinson, Gibson, Hank Aaron to name just a few.

I highly recommend this book, especially for baseball fans and readers interested in how one sport was for the longest time a reflection of American society.

[Teresa Rokas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't normally read sports books but this was very good. The author brings you right into the 1949 pennant race between rivals the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees. This was a time when baseball was really America's pastime. The author fits the race into the history of the time. Lots of good background on the players, coaches, writers, etc.

[carl theaker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this at the perfect time, during my first trip to NYC which was to see games at Yankee and Mets stadia, which were torn down at the end of that season.

Great weaving of player's lives with the baseball story and historical context of America.

Interesting items - it was considered a sign of weakness to drink water during a game, and this was when wearing wool uniforms, also to eat a candy bar or anything like that.

Even though the nation only had 3 million TV sets, fans were already clowning for the camera. Ahh America!

[Nancy Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Riveting account of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, featuring Hall of Famers Joe Dimaggio and Ted Williams as well as a host of other talented (though often less famous) ballplayers, during a heated race for the pennant and a time of great social change. Halberstam strikes a perfect balance between profiling players, culture, and play-by-play to keep readers sitting on the edge of our seats to learn how it ends -- more than six decades after the fact.

[Anthony Mazzorana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um... it's a book about baseball. It would have been near impossible for me NOT to have loved it. The only way it could have been better would be if it came with its own beer. It didn't, so I supplied my own.

[Shay Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Halberstam is Old Reliable. His books are always marvelously readable and thoroughly researched. What I love best about this book in particular is that he concentrates on the human beings involved and not on endless dreary statistics. I came away feeling almost as if i had met all of these old-time baseball figures and understood them far better than i ever did before. Moreover, this book deals with a time before I was born, and the author paints it so vividly that I feel as if I visited that bygone era as well. Good stuff.

[Roy · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the cliché goes, you can’t judge a book by its cover. Those are wise and banal words. They are also applicable words to Halberstam’s well told novel about the Yankees-Red Sox pennant race in 1949, for if you were to judge this book by its cover you would think that it was a poorly researched cartoon about baseball.

Once you get past the odd sight of Joe DiMaggio hitting left handed (with a reversed NY on his uniform) the book tells the tale of mid-century America with a focus on its most popular sport. Halberstam paints a few dozen portraits of assorted players, coaches, front office men, and media members that were influential in New York and Boston baseball at the time. He does a great job of stringing together what is essentially a series of mini-biographies to talk about not just hits, runs, balls, and strikes, but also contract negotiations, the role of the media, the changing feelings about race, class and immigration and a variety of other off-the-field topics. This is a baseball book, but it is not about the nitty-gritty events of a game.

Halberstam rightly spends a good amount of time on the teams’ two stars: DiMaggio and Williams. It is not a perfect contrast between the two as they are both image-conscious ballplayers that were all-time great hitters, but what does come into focus as the two are analyzed is how they were treated differently by the media, fans and team mates.

DiMaggio was the perfect stoic, a monolith, in some ways as much of an idea as he was a man. Oddly, the death of his father, which happens in the summer of 1949, is barely mentioned. Also, his two marriages don’t make it into the book, not even his famous and tempestuous relationship with Marilyn Monroe. I can only guess this was done out of respect for DiMaggio, but it is an odd and glaring omission.

The Williams sections are an honest portrait of a prickly man. Because Williams learned to open up as he grew older, Hallberstam is able to get inside of him more to explain his personality and motivations. After retiring, Williams became a true character who learned to enjoy his life.

Every year during spring training, as I prepare for my fantasy baseball draft, I like to read a baseball book to remind me that the game is still about people, events and ideas and not just statistics. Summer of ’49 is a worthy reminder of that.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

I usually stick to fiction, but a co-worker (and fellow Yankees fan) gave me a copy of this book and I decided to give it a read, and I was very pleasantly surprised.

Even though "Summer of '49" is way before my time, I appreciated it on a number of levels. I learned a lot about the time period, the beginnings of television and advertising in baseball, the difference in the relationship between the media and the players, and the effect of the war on the game and the careers of its stars. I also came to realize the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry stretched much further back than I thought it did, and learned the origin of "Dropkick Murphy's," which is mentioned in passing in the book.

Besides learning more about stars I vaguely recognized from the era -- such as Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto and Ted Williams -- I was also introduced to a number of other equally interesting stars and supporting characters -- like Tommy Henrich, Allie Reynolds, Vic Rashi, Johnny Pesky and Dominic DiMaggio.

I am very glad I read "Summer of '49." It was captivating while being informative, and gives me an entirely new insight into America's pastime.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summer of ‘49 is a non-fiction book about baseball in the 1940s. The New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, rivals for decades, must beat each other for a bid in the 1949 World Series.

There are many characters in this book, and each unfold in different ways. The legendary Joe Dimaggio, and his less famous brother, Dominic, have to play separately, even on separate teams! In the final game of the season, Joe must win to get his World series check, and Dominic just wants to get to the great World Series. Another great character who was in the story for all the years, and through ‘49, is Yogi Berra, as he transforms from a talented young rookie to a clubhouse leader.

The story was a little off-centered, it started out way before ‘49, and then finally got to 1949 halfway through the book. I didn’t like this very much, because I wanted to get to the action right away. I t took many turns with different teams and different players, before reaching the destination, the 1949 season.

this book is very humorous and has a great arsenal of quotes. It is a funny factual book, showing that you can always try, but you don’t always do.

[MacK · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the midst of a pandemic, I could use any sports writing I can get, and with its author's reputation and its classic setting of a legendary rivalry, this seemed ideal.

But, for me, it just didn't connect. Maybe it was a frustration with the cover's promise: "baseball's greatest season", I mean, it sounds pretty good for Yankees and Red Sox, but baseball's much bigger than that (1908, 1954, 1969, 2001, 2016 all have a bit more meat on that bone for me).

Maybe it was an uneven distribution of anecdotes and game telling: gobs of season rush by in a paragraph while pages are spent on a pitcher's contract negotiations from three years before. A dominant relief pitcher's story is encapsulated in one binge drinking anecdote, while mid-June blowouts are meticulously documented.

Maybe it just felt irrelevant in the midst of our modern world. Though Hallberstam is blunt in his critique of two reluctantly integrated franchises, reading it in the midst of serious explorations of race and justice in the US served mainly to highlight how far in the background it was for the all white rivalry.

In all, it was interesting without becoming captivating, which is fine for a lazy summer read.

[Tim J Farmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more. The stories are amazing. It’s too long, though. The best parts are too short and some of the worst parts drone on. The epilogue is my favorite part of the book. Succinct, interesting, memorable. Parts of the rest of the book are this way as well. It’s a good introduction to some of baseball’s greatest characters, unfortunately probably 25% of this book rambles too much and, frankly, is uninteresting. The rest is really good.

[José Pedraza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Segunda lectura, 2024. Tuve que subir su calificación. Me encanta. Los deportes importan más culturalmente de lo que muchos piensan.


Comentario 2023:
El béisbol es un juego hermoso. Hay tanto que se puede aprender de él y los libros de este autor relatan momentos importantes de una manera detallada pero para nada pesada, al contrario, son muy entretenidos

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best sports books I've ever read. Highly recommended!

[Jeff Garrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published along with a poem in my blog: http://skidawaypres.org/pastor/?p=3572

In the post wars years, as players returned from the war, baseball captured the imagination of Americans. It was America’s sport. Football and basketball prominence was still in the future. The ballpark was a place where the melting pot vision could be witnessed firsthand. Immigrant children like the DiMaggios (there were three brothers who played in the majors) were second generation Italians and stars. Then, staring in 1947 with Jackie Robinson, African-Americans were included in the roosters. Postwar ball reached a new height with the thrilling 1948 pennant race in the American League. In the days before playoff series, the top team in each league went to the World Series, and if there was a tie, there was a one game playoff. Three teams were in contention in ‘48: the Cleveland Indians, Boston Red Sox’s and the New York Yankees. The Indians won, leaving the younger Red Sox’s and the older Yankees disappointed.

The 1949 season turned out to be just as exciting as the Yankees and Red Sox’s battled it out for the American League pennant. The season began with the Yankees great Joe DiMaggios (who’d bridged the team from the Ruth/Gehrig era to the Mantle/Maris era) being out with an injured foot. The other great hitter was the Red Sox’s Ted Williams. Also playing for the Red Sox’s was Joe’s brother, Dominic. It was an exciting season in which the Yankees won the pennant in the last inning of the last game as the two teams battled it out.

Halberstam, who was a teenager during this season, captures the excitement that came down to the final inning. Once again, the Red Sox’s are disappointed. The Yankees win. Halberstam tells the story of this season, providing insight into the financial workings of baseball as well the changes that were taking place. This was a time when players still mostly traveled in trains, but planes were making their debut. It was also a time that most games, which had previously not been broadcast locally, were being on the air and great names were emerging in the broadcast booth, many who would soon become the well-known reporters who overshadowed the previously honored sportswriters. Even television made an appearance during the World Series. And for the Yankees, new names were rising up such as their new manager, Casey Stengel, and their rookie catcher, Yogi Berra. Other players who would grow into greatness were also beginning to make themselves known such as Willie Mays (whom the Yankees took a pass on due to his race).

Although I have never liked the Yankees, I was impressed with their teams discipline and how they instilled hard playing in each member of the team. Joe DiMaggio exemplifies this when asked why he plays so hard in games in which little was at stake and he responded that there might be someone in the crowd who’d never seen him play. For anyone who enjoys baseball, this is a good read.

[Nathan Mohr · Rating 4 out of 5]

As both a baseball fan and a fan of history, I greatly enjoyed David Halberstam's wonderful book on the pennant race between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. Though I had a general knowledge of several of the players involved, Halberstam brought new insight and understanding regarding the players, the financial aspects, and the game itself.

It is my unofficial opinion that many of the best history books are ones that are not afraid to veer off the beaten path of a singular narrative in order to share contextual reminiscences that will enrich said narrative, and Halberstam certainly does that. Time and again he shares the backstory of certain players, along with rich anecdotes which bring both these characters and the times in which they lived to life. I particularly enjoyed the way he delves into player contract negotiations, specifically the Yankees players and their contentious relationship with Yankees general manager George Weiss. Given the power of negotiation that agents bring to the table today, it was interesting to hear about a time when most of the power belonged on the other side of the table. Weiss, btw, did not sound like a pleasant individual to deal with.

Also of major interest was how he addressed DiMaggio and Ted Williams at this time in their careers. DiMaggio in particular was in the twilight of his career, and it was interesting to see how his struggles with health and his declining skills played into the pennant race (DiMaggio at his worst, however, was still better than most players at their best, his final season he had a slash line of .263/.365/.422). I loved hearing how these aging stars still rose to the occasion in such a close pennant race.

The downsides were that Halberstam drops a LOT of names, and anyone but the most ardent fans will soon feel buried under them. Some of these gain additional context and enough is shared about them that you soon are able to follow their part in the narrative, others come and go so quickly that you have a hard time following what role they actually did play. There is also a sense that Halberstam is writing about this because the pennant race is supposed to be an instant classic, but I can actually name several pennant races/playoff runs/world series races which held more intrigue and had a more exciting finish than this one. As a snapshot of a certain time in baseball history, however, I think you could do a lot worse. This is certainly a book I would recommend for anyone interested in that.

[Trevor Seigler · Rating 5 out of 5]

If David Halberstam had written a history of the phone book, I would read it. One of the best writers of the last century when it comes to non-fiction, he seems at his best when writing about sports. His book about Michael Jordan and the 90's Bulls ("Playing for Keeps") and his look at the 1979 Portland Trailblazers ("The Breaks of the Game") are stone-cold classics. This book, about the 1949 pennant race between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, is another.

"Summer of '49" is a re-read on my part, and I'm glad that I did. I remember loving it when I came across it as a teenager, and now it hits even more now that I've read more about the history of baseball and many of the figures included here. Halberstam profiles the mighty (Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, a young Yogi Berra, Casey Stengal) but also the lesser-known figures from that time, men who excelled either on the field (like Phil Rizzuto, Ellis Kinder, and Bobby Doerr) or off it (Mel Allen). Throughout, Halberstam balances the precarious situation of reporting on hallowed figures who are all too human without dispelling all of the myths around them.

"Summer of '49" shows how the game was changing, both for the better (the steady inclusion, year by year, of more Black athletes) and for the worse (the growing divide between owners and players), as well as highlighting the changes in American society at large. This is a beautiful, heartfelt but honest look at a time in American history that is too often rendered through nostalgia as an "age of innocence" when it was much more complicated than that (as indeed are *all* periods of American history). By printing both the legend and the fact, Halberstam ensures that the real story of the Yankees and Red Sox in 1949 will be told.

[matteo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love baseball. This is a good book about an epic time, when baseball pretty much ruled the US sporting world, and the players were demigods.

This book was published in 1989--almost equidistant between the time of the topic and now. The 1949 baseball season was 75 years ago. So it is not astonishing how different of a world it was, both in baseball and generally.

World War II was fresh in the minds of both players and fans. Major players in this book had missed years of their prime. Health and fitness were completely different than now. It was Jackie Robinson's third year. The teams pretty much owned the players, from the minors up to the majors; free agency was decades away. And probably most importantly: the team that won its league in the regular season went straight to the World Series; there was no playoff gauntlet.

Even the history of this rivalry has changed: while the Yankees and Red Sox are still great rivals, the Red Sox flipped the script in the past twenty years. Then again, it took them fifty-five years after the 1949 season (and fifteen years after this book) to finally win a World Series.

The writing is fine, though occasionally sloppy and repetitive. (My editorial mind kicked in on more than one occasion.) It seemed like a long newspaper article--maybe on purpose, since a lot of the book was also about the newspaper press at the time and the relationships between players and writers (or players and nonplayers).

[Levi Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. As someone who gets pretty tired of all the corporate greed and sponsorship taking over the game of major league baseball, to the point that they even make major rule changes to fit the perimeters of tv time. I relate to this book a lot. I think I would trade all the luxuries of baseball today to go back in time and enjoy a season of listening to games on the radio and religiously reading the papers and sportswriters of the time. The game itself seemed to have been more pure and exciting to watch. I think the author is a little sporadic in the way he writes and there isn’t a clear storyline to the book. If you’re someone who has to have a clear storyline then it’s not for you, he bounces around from experience to experience and will go forward in time and back in time a lot. However, if you don’t mind that, he is an excellent writer. Halberstam brings a certain passion to his writing that only someone who experienced this era of baseball first hand could do. He brings in not just stories of the games from that great season but stories of people from all walks of life that are brought together in their fandom of baseball. He does a great job of tying all the stories and people he talks about together in the end. If you can handle his writing style and yearn for stories of a simpler era of baseball then this is definitely a great book for you!

[Mike Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shortly after World War II, the summer of 1949 featured an epic battle between historic rivals the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees. The Yankees were led by an aging Joe DiMaggio and the Red Sox had their own superstar in the making in Ted Williams.

I enjoyed this book. It was a good look into a classic baseball season shortly after World War II and Jacque Robinson’s feat of breaking in the color barrier. It was interesting to see the contrast between Joe DiMaggio, who was on his way down and Ted Williams, who was in his prime.

A fun read for all baseball fans. This book brings you back to a simpler time when ball players weren’t paid the enormous sum they are today and the owners had all the power.