Summer of ’49 (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

Halberstam, best known for THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST, a study of American involvement in Vietnam, interviewed most of the surviving members of the two teams to create an anecdotal account of the rivalry between the Yankees and the Red Sox. Boston, expected to be a contender, found itself twelve games behind New York in June, but when pitchers Mel Parnell and Ellis Kinder got hot, the Red Sox closed the gap, only to lose the pennant when the Yankees defeated them in the season’s final two games.

Halberstam, who has also written about Olympic sculling and professional basketball, laments a loss of relative innocence by the national pastime and of the heroic stature of its stars. In 1949, the public listened to baseball games on the radio, a medium that heightened the mystique of the participants; television would soon depict the players as tiny images, much less mythic figures. Yet the era was far from idyllic, with drunken, loutish players; arrogant, impatient managers; greedy, racist owners; and a ruthlessly critical press.

Halberstam sees Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams as the last of the truly great players. DiMaggio overcame an injury that threatened his career to destroy the Red Sox with five home runs in one week. While the writer finds Williams an admirable, likable person in retirement, the cold, aloof DiMaggio would not even be interviewed. Halberstam judges the players by their accomplishments on the field rather than off but reveals that several of the stars of 1949 were as intent upon destroying themselves as today’s even less disciplined players.

Sources for Further Study

The American Spectator. XXII, October, 1989, p. 35.

Baseball America IX, October 25, 1989, p. 35.

Business Week. May 29, 1989, p. 16.

Library Journal. CXIV, September 1, 1989, p. 235.

Maclean’s. CII, June 12, 1989, p. 56.

The Nation. CCXLIX, August 21, 1989, p. 210.

The New York Review of Books. XXXV I, October 12, 1989, p. 49.

The New York Times Book Review. XCIV, May 7, 1989, p. 9.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXXV, March 17, 1989, p. 86.

The Sewanee Review. XCVII, Summer, 1989, p. 475.

Time. CXXXIII, May 22, 1989, p. 114.