Type of bind: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 384
Printing Date: March 01, 2002
Sale Popularity Level: 459070
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Product Description:
David Halberstam's New York Times bestselling classic chronicle of baseball's most magnificent season, as seen through the battle royale between Joe DiMaggio's Yankees and Ted Williams's Red Sox for the heart of a nation.
With incredible skill, passion, and insight, Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Halberstam returns us to the miraculous summer of '49 ... and to a glorious time when the dreams of a now almost forgotten America rested on the crack of a bat.
Amazon.com Review:
With the airwaves saturated with so much sporting choice, it's hard to imagine how, not that long ago, baseball so completely dominated the landscape and captured imaginations. Given the 1949 season that veteran journalist David Halberstam meticulously recreates, maybe it's not so hard after all. It was a season of great public and personal drama for the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, with the conflict finally resolving itself in a Yankee pennant following a head-to-head showdown on the final day of the season. Each team was led by a star of the highest magnitude: Joe DiMaggio spurred the Yankees despite missing half the season with a foot injury; Ted Williams virtually carried the Sox on his back, missing an unprecedented third Triple Crown by mere decimal points on his batting average. Halberstam focuses much of his narrative on the trials of these two individual sporting giants, adding fine supporting performances by Yogi Berra, Ellis Kinder, Dom DiMaggio, even restaurateur Toots Shoor. Both on and off the field, Halberstam beautifully captures the ethos of a more innocent game that no longer exists, played by heroes far more driven by their pride than by their salaries.
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Rated by buyers 
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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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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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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 very first remember watching baseball in the mid-70s and lived for baseball and the Yankees.
I still remember attending my very 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 colour 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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"Summer of `49" focuses on the rivalry between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees as they fought for very first place during the Summer of 1949. This was before the days of the wild card and very first place meant a trip to the playoffs while second place meant a trip home. The two teams fought for very 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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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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