Summer of '49
Summer Of '49. By David Halberstam. (New York: Avon Books. 1989. Pp. XIV, 319.) David Halberstam was born April 10, 1934, in New York, New York. During his childhood, he would go down to the Polo Grounds and watch the Yankees, his heroes, whom he describes in his book. He graduated from Harvard University in 1955, and began his career as a war correspondent and political reporter. For the next ten years Halberstam was a lead reporter for the Daily Times Leader, New York Times, and served as a foreign correspondent in the Congo, Vietnam, Poland, and France. In 1962, The New York Times assigned Halberstam to South Vietnam. It was there that he often wrote controversial articles often questioning the official version of events in the Vietnam War. In 1964, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting and after that, he continued to examine the war in a series of books and magazine articles. Over the years, Halberstam has also won numerous awards for his writing, such as, the George Polk Memorial Award, the Political Book Award and another Pulitzer Prize.
This reader also gained many new viewpoints and ideas of baseball, such as the idea of players actually playing for the love of the game, not just for money, what a true rivalry was, and to see the game before it was transformed into a show business. In addition to chronicling the pennant race, Halberstam also focuses on the rivalry between DiMaggio and Williams, but even more so he focuses on an era. However, Halberstam realizes that not all readers know the intertwining history and player relationships of the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox; so he writes in such an enjoyable, interesting and informative manner that really anyone can read it and will become an instant fan. The New York Yankees sent Bill McCorry, who was a southern, to scout Willie Mays. It's positively a shame, they are getting big money for it, too. Halberstam's book is a celebration of a vanished heroic age and a simpler America. 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 Red Sox on his back, missing an unprecedented third Triple Crown by mere decimal points on his batting average. The time when Hank Bauer, (a rookie), called off DiMaggio for a fly ball in right center field, usually DiMaggio's territory. Duffy does not make mention any weak features of the book, and on the praiseworthy side only states, "this new work may be his most appealing, mainly because it is quirky and informal, and the author leaves his moral fervor in the bat rack", and "He captures both the glamour and the quaintness of the late 1940's. With a simple and unpretentious style, Halberstam writes an altogether engrossing book. Old-time baseball players and fans love to denigrate the modern ballplayer. Yogi Berra's mom treats his fractured thumb with a lemon. After stating how awful the Red Sox are she writes, "The New York Yankees are a legend, power at bat, awesome pitching, managerial smarts to spare," followed by, "That year (1949) the pennant race came between the two teams came down to the last game.
Common topics in this essay:
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