David Halberstam on Sports: Summer of '49, October 1964, The Amateurs, Playing for Keeps

by David Halberstam

Overview

Four New York Times bestsellers by a “remarkable” Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist capture and celebrate America’s passion for sports (The Seattle Times).
 
Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist David Halberstam, preeminent chronicler of the American experience, focuses his meticulous narrative gifts on some of Major League Baseball’s most iconic moments, training for the Olympics, and a remarkable profile of hoops legend Michael Jordan.
 
Summer of ’49: In this #1 New York Times bestseller, Halberstam brings to stirring life the unforgettable season that cemented baseball as America’s pastime. A nation in transition is gripped by a pennant race for the ages: the Boston Red Sox, led by Ted Williams’s unearthly bat skills, versus the New York Yankees and Joe DiMaggio’s legendary heroics. Every hit on and off the field crackles across the page “in such an enjoyable, interesting, and informative manner that a reader needn’t be a baseball fan to appreciate the book” (Library Journal).
 
October 1964: The 1964 World Series pitted the established Yankees against the upstart St. Louis Cardinals in an epic, seven-game seesaw battle that seemed to reflect the tensions of a nation in turmoil. The barnburner included a cast of legends—Mantle, Maris, Ford, Gibson, Brock—and enough game-changing plays to last a lifetime. Halberstam captures every moment with “a fluidity of writing that make[s] the reading almost effortless. . . . Absorbing” (San Francisco Chronicle).
 
The Amateurs: This inspirational bestseller focuses Halberstam’s brilliant reportage on the travails and triumphs of Olympic rowing. Introducing us to a cast of highly driven athletes at the 1984 single sculls trials in Princeton, Halberstam delves deep into their struggles, motivations, and failures—but in the end only one will represent the United States at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Informative and compelling, Halberstam “maintains the suspense to the very last stroke” (Sports Illustrated).
 
Playing for Keeps: A wildly entertaining and revealing portrait of global icon Michael Jordan and the rise of the NBA. With his usual impeccable research and gripping storytelling, Halberstam covers the whole court, from the transformative rivalry of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson to the invention of ESPN to Spike Lee’s Nike commercials to every unforgettable playoff game that built Jordan’s legend. “Filled with salty, informed hoops talk” (Publishers Weekly), this “remarkable book . . . [is] a must-read for basketball fans, admirers of Jordan, and anyone who seeks to understand sports in America today” (Bill Bradley).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504052245
Publisher:	Open Road Media
Publication date:	03/20/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	1730
Sales rank:	1,001,719
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

David Halberstam (1934–2007) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author. He is best known for his brazen coverage of the Vietnam War for the New York Times and for his twenty-one nonfiction books, which cover a wide array of topics such as the plight of Detroit and the auto industry, and the incomparable success of Michael Jordan. The recipient of the Mailer Prize for distinguished journalism, Halberstam wrote for numerous publications throughout his career and, according to journalist George Packer, single-handedly set the standard of “the reporter as fearless truth teller.” Halberstam died in 2007.
David Halberstam (1934–2007) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author. He is best known for his brazen coverage of the Vietnam War for the New York Times and for his twenty-one nonfiction books, which cover a wide array of topics such as the plight of Detroit and the auto industry, and the incomparable success of Michael Jordan. The recipient of the Mailer Prize for distinguished journalism, Halberstam wrote for numerous publications throughout his career and, according to journalist George Packer, single-handedly set the standard of “the reporter as fearless truth teller.” Halberstam died in 2007. 

Date of Birth:

April 10, 1934

Date of Death:

April 23, 2007

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Place of Death:

San Francisco, California

Education:

B.A., Harvard, 1955

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

In the years immediately following World War II, professional baseball mesmerized the American people as it never had before and never would again. Baseball, more than almost anything else, seemed to symbolize normalcy and a return to life in America as it had been before Pearl Harbor. The nation clearly hungered for that. When Bob Feller returned from the navy to pitch in late August 1945, a Cleveland paper headlined the event: THIS IS WHAT WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR.

All the prewar stars were returning to action — DiMaggio, Williams, Feller, and Stan Musial — and their very names seemed to indicate that America could pick up right where it had left off. They were replacing wartime players of lesser quality. Indeed, a player named George (Cat) Metkovich spoke for many of the wartime players when he told his Boston teammates at the end of the 1945 season, "Well, boys, better take a good look around you, because most of us won't be here next year."

The crowds were extraordinary — large, enthusiastic, and, compared with those that were soon to follow, well behaved. In the prewar years the Yankees, whose teams had included Ruth, Gehrig, and DiMaggio, claimed that they drew 1 million fans at home each season. In fact, they had not drawn that well. The real home attendance was more likely to have been around 800,000. After the war the crowds literally doubled. In 1941, the last year of prewar baseball, the National League drew 4.7 million fans; by 1947 the figure had grown to 10.4 million. In the postwar years the Yankees alone drew more than 2 million fans per season at home.

Nor was it just numbers. There was a special intensity to the crowds in those days. When the Red Sox played the Yankees in the Stadium, they traveled to New York by train, passing through Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Everyone seemed to know the schedule of their train, and as it passed through endless small towns along the route, there would be large crowds gathered at the stations to cheer the players, many of the people holding up signs exhorting their heroes to destroy the hated Yankees. The conductor would deliberately slow the train down and many of the players, on their way to do battle with the sworn enemy, would come out on the observation decks to wave to the crowds.

Near the end of the 1946 season, a young Red Sox pitcher named Dave Ferriss went into Yankee Stadium to pitch and was stunned by the size of the crowd: 63,000 people, according to the newspapers, even though at the time the Red Sox held a sizable lead over the Yankees. Ferriss had only recently left a tiny town in the Mississippi Delta. That day he was so awed by the noise and tumult that in the middle of the game he decided to commit the scene to memory and take it with him for the rest of his life. He stepped off the mound, turned slowly to the stands, and inhaled the crowd. Ferriss thought to himself: How magnificent it all is. This is the Red Sox and this is the Yankees. I am twenty-four, and I am pitching in Yankee Stadium, and every seat is taken.

With the exception of the rare heavyweight fight or college football game that attracted national attention, baseball dominated American sports entertainment. Professional football, soon to become a major sport because its faster action so well suited the television camera, was still a minor-league ticket; golf and tennis were for the few who played those sports.

Rich businessmen, thinking about becoming owners of sports teams, did not yet talk about the entertainment dollar, for America was a Calvinistic nation, not much given to entertaining itself. In the world of baseball, the sport itself was vastly more important than such ancillary commercial sources of revenue as broadcasting, endorsements, concessions, and parking.

There were only sixteen teams in the big leagues, and in an America defined by the railroad instead of the airplane, St. Louis was a far-west team and Washington a Southern one. California might as well have been in another country. The pace of life in America had not yet accelerated as it was soon to do from the combination of endless technological breakthroughs and undreamed-of affluence in ordinary homes. The use of drugs seemed very distant. The prevailing addiction of more than a few players (and managers, coaches, sportswriters, and indeed owners) was alcohol, apparently a more acceptable and less jarring form of self-destruction. It was, thought Curt Gowdy, a young sportscaster who had just joined the Yankees, the last moment of innocence in American life.

Baseball was rooted not just in the past but in the culture of the country; it was celebrated in the nation's literature and songs. When a poor American boy dreamed of escaping his grim life, his fantasy probably involved becoming a professional baseball player. It was not so much the national sport as the binding national myth.

It was also the embodiment of the melting-pot theory, or at least the white melting-pot theory, of America. One of its preeminent players, Joe DiMaggio, was the son of a humble immigrant fisherman, and the fact that three of the fisherman's sons had made the major leagues proved to many the openness and fairness of American society. America cheered the DiMaggio family, and by so doing, proudly cheered itself. When DiMaggio played in his first World Series, his mother traveled by train to watch him play. She was a modest woman, but open and candid, and she became something of a celebrity herself by telling reporters (in Italian) that the trip was hard for her because there was so little to do in New York — she wished there was some cleaning, or at least some dishes to wash and dry.

The great waves of immigration from Europe had taken place in the latter part of the nineteenth and first part of the twentieth centuries. Few of the children of those immigrants had yet succeeded in politics, business, or academe. It was baseball that first offered them a chance for fame and glory. That this chance came in — of all places — a sport did not always thrill their parents.

Giuseppe DiMaggio at first frowned on baseball as too frivolous. Only as Joe became a major star did his opinion change, and he came to enjoy his son's success. Because he could not read English he would wake his youngest son, Dominic, at four o'clock in the morning when the newspaper arrived so that Dominic could read and interpret the box score for him.

Phil Rizzuto's parents came from Calabria. In America his father was first a laborer and then a conductor on the BMT subway. He also thought baseball was a foolish choice for a career and argued vehemently against it. Finally his wife softened his opposition — she observed that if it didn't work out, then their son could take a real job. Still, Fiore Rizzuto was suspicious of this new world, outside New York City, that his son was entering — it might be like the old country, filled with people from the Black Hand. As Phil set off on his first train ride to a town in Virginia, his father pinned twenty dollars (Phil's only money) into his undershirt so that robbers would not be able to find it. He warned his son not to fall asleep on the train, no matter how tired he was.

Johnny Pesky of the Red Sox was born in Portland, Oregon, to Croatian immigrants named Paveskovich. Pesky picked up his abbreviated surname first as a schoolyard nickname, then it became a means of simplifying box scores, and finally he took it as his legal surname. That bothered his parents — did this mean their son was ashamed of his real name? They worried as well that by choosing sports as a vocation Johnny was becoming a bum.

Tommy Henrich, grandson of German immigrants, knew how hard it was for the members of his family who had come from the old country to understand his career. On the occasion of his first contract, his father told his grandfather, "Tommy is going to play professional baseball." "Oh, is that so," the grandfather replied. "What is he, anyway — the striker?"

Baseball, then, came to symbolize the idea of America as a land of opportunity and justice for all. And in 1947, finally, with the coming of Jackie Robinson, the sport was going to open up not just for the sons of recent immigrants but to native sons of color as well. The coming of Robinson did not take place without some rumbling, most notably from players who were from the South, or whose talents were so marginal that the coming of blacks represented the most basic kind of a job threat. In spring training, 1947, Leo Durocher, heading off an early protest by some of his white players, warned, "He's just the first. Just the first. They're all going to come, and they're going to be hungry, damned hungry, and if you don't put out, they'll take your jobs."

He was right: That very sense of continuity, the belief that life would once again be the same, was erroneous. The country was already changing, the pace of life accelerating, due in no small part to the coming of a powerful new communications empire, of which baseball itself would be a prime beneficiary. In 1947, the World Series was telecast to a few Eastern cities. In 1948, there was a crude attempt to televise the Series to the East Coast from so distant a city as Cleveland by having a plane fly above the ball park in a kind of horse-and-buggy version of a satellite. That year there were so few television sets (by one count, 325,000 in all of America, half of them in the New York City area) that the Gillette Company, which was sponsoring the games, placed 100 new sets on the Boston Common so that ordinary fans might gather there and watch.

It was immediately obvious that there was a natural affinity between sports and television, and by the spring of 1949, advertisements in The New York Times pushed baseball as the reason for buying a set: "Batter Up! Imperial offers you a Box Set. RCA Victor Television. $375. Installation and home owner policy $55. 52 square inch screen." That was in contrast to a GE set: "So Bright! So Clear! So Easy on the Eyes! $725."

Television's vast impact on sports was still to come. For the moment, though, radio had greatly increased the size of audiences and put fans in daily contact with their favorite teams. In 1946, a radio broadcaster named Mel Allen traveled with the Yankees to every game and did the first live broadcasts of away games. Previously, those games had been done by local sports announcers using the Western Union ticker and recreating as best they could the sounds and sights of the ball park.

Radio made the games and the players seem vastly more important, mythic even. It also pioneered in another area: the use of sports as an advertising vehicle. Until the coming of radio, commercial exploitation was limited; a local semi-pro baseball team might bear the name of a neighborhood car dealer on the back of its uniforms, and at a local ball park there might be signs lining the outfield fences to advertise various products. But when advertising executives discovered that sports and athletes could be used to sell products, a new, high-powered marriage was soon arranged. Radio formed the first national commercial network. If a rose was a rose was a rose, then an athlete was a hero was a salesman, although baseball players received, of course, a disproportionate amount of the new endorsement opportunities. In the spring of 1950, an ad for Camel cigarettes portrayed two major-league pitchers — Johnny Vander Meer, a veteran pitcher, and Gene Bearden, Rookie of the Year in the American League — exhorting ordinary Americans to share in the pleasures of Camels. Vander Meer said, "I've smoked Camels for ten years, Gene! They're mild and they sure taste great." Bearden answered, "Right, Van! It's Camels for me too — ever since I made the thirty-day mildness test!"

Soon the athletes would become the beneficiaries of the new commercial affluence. In 1988, the players on the starting lineup for the Yankees earned an average salary of $694,000; in 1948 that was more than the entire payroll of even the best teams, which averaged about $450,000. Even accounting for inflation, the figures reflected the coming of the entertainment society and the passing of power from owner to player.

The rivalry of the Red Sox and the Yankees was an important part of the myth of baseball. In 1920 the Red Sox's principal owner, a Broadway producer named Harry Frazee, was desperate for funds, so he sold a twenty-four-year-old pitcher named Babe Ruth to the Yankees for the unheard-of sum of $125,000. Boston fans never recovered. Ruth was an outstanding young pitcher, but he had won only nine games the year before. What made the sale so bitter for Boston fans was the fact that Ruth had hit 29 home runs that season, an amazing number for the time, 19 more than the runner-up.

Five years later Frazee opened a show called No, No, Nanette which became his greatest hit. However, the show's success, considerable though it was, brought little consolation to New England, since in the previous season Ruth, already well established as the premier power hitter in the game, batted .378, with 46 home runs (16 more than the entire Boston team) and 121 runs batted in.

The Yankees, with Ruth, went on to dominate the American League in the twenties and thirties, although in the years just before World War II the Red Sox were an ascending team. A wealthy young man named Tom Yawkey bought them in 1933, and proved to be the most loving of owners. In fact, some thought him too loving and referred to the team as a country club. Be that as it may, he dramatically upgraded the Red Sox and improved their scouting system as well. They finished second in 1938, 1939, 1941, and 1942, always, of course, to the Yankees. On the eve of World War II, Boston finally appeared ready to challenge the Yankees.

In 1949 the Red Sox were, to all intents and purposes, a mighty team. There was Ted Williams, only twenty-six years old at the time of V-J. To many the best hitter in baseball, he was nicknamed "God" by Johnny Pesky, the shortstop (who, in turn, because of his rather large nose, was called either "Needle" or "Needlenose" by Williams). There was Dominic DiMaggio, the third of the DiMaggio brothers to play in the major leagues, an all-star in his own right. According to his teammates, Dom had the hardest job in baseball since he led off for Boston. That meant he underwent a fierce interrogation by Williams about the opposing pitcher every time he came back to the dugout: What was he throwing, Dommy, was he fast, was he tricky, was he getting the corners? Come on, Dommy, you saw him. In addition there was Bobby Doerr at second base. Smooth and steady, a future Hall of Fame player, he was extremely popular with his teammates.

The basic lineup of the Red Sox seemed set. It was filled with hitters, and, especially in Fenway, pitchers hated to go against them. The feel of the team was good. It had the right mix of veterans and young players, the right balance between country boys and city boys — as exemplified by the baiting of Boo Ferriss, the quintessential country boy, whose harshest expletive was "Shuck-uns," by Mickey Harris, who was from New York City. Harris's mouth, even in this profession of unexpurgated language, was considered uniquely foul. He devoted great energy to trying to get Boo Ferriss to say a dirty word. He would needle Ferriss constantly about what was wrong with him as an athlete and what was wrong with Mississippi, Ferriss's home state. Finally, Ferriss would explode. "You said it! You said it," Harris would joyously proclaim. "Mickey," Ferriss would answer, "I did not say what you thought I said — I merely said 'John Brownit.'"

Pitching was a perennial problem with the Red Sox, however. Fenway's short fence encouraged better-than-average hitters to think they were very good hitters, but it worked psychic damage on the team's pitchers. In spring training, 1946, Red Sox veterans paid particular attention to the young pitchers — namely, Ferriss and Tex Hughson — who had been pitching well, albeit during the war years. Ferriss, for example had won 21 games and lost only 10 in 1945.

But in spring 1946 Ferriss had to face Williams in batting practice. Williams was the most passionate hitter in baseball, and the philosopher king of hitting as well. He was always discoursing on the science of it; pitchers, he thought, were "dumb by breed." When Williams stepped up to bat, suddenly, Ferriss realized it was as if spring training had stopped altogether and something different and tougher had started. Most of the other players stopped whatever they were doing to watch. Much depended on this. World Series checks might ride on how good this young pitcher was.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "David Halberstam on Sports"
by .
Copyright © 1989 David Halberstam.
Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

• Summer of ’49
  • Title Page
  • Dedication
  • Contents
  • Epigraph
  • PROLOGUE
  • CHAPTER 1
  • CHAPTER 2
  • CHAPTER 3
  • CHAPTER 4
  • CHAPTER 5
  • CHAPTER 6
  • CHAPTER 7
  • CHAPTER 8
  • CHAPTER 9
  • CHAPTER 10
  • CHAPTER 11
  • CHAPTER 12
  • CHAPTER 13
  • CHAPTER 14
  • CHAPTER 15
  • EPILOGUE
  • AUTHOR'S NOTE
  • BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX
  • A
  • B
  • C
  • D
  • E
  • F
  • G
  • H
  • I
  • J
  • K
  • L
  • M
  • N
  • O
  • P
  • Q
  • R
  • S
  • T
  • U
  • V
  • W
  • Y
  • Z
• PHOTO GALLERY
• October 1964
  • Title Page
  • Dedication
  • Contents
  • Epigraph
  • Prologue
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • 11
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • 16
  • 17
  • 18
  • 19
  • 20
  • 21
  • 22
  • 23
  • 24
  • 25
  • 26
  • 27
  • 28
  • 29
  • 30
  • 31
  • Epilogue
  • Acknowledgements
• The Amateurs
  • Title Page
  • Dedication
  • Contents
  • Chapter One
  • Chapter Two
  • Chapter Three
  • Chapter Four
  • Chapter Five
  • Chapter Six
  • Chapter Seven
  • Chapter Eight
  • Chapter Nine
  • Chapter Ten
  • Chapter Eleven
  • Chapter Twelve
  • Chapter Thirteen
  • Chapter Fourteen
  • Chapter Fifteen
  • Chapter Sixteen
  • Chapter Seventeen
  • Chapter Eighteen
  • Chapter Nineteen
  • Chapter Twenty
  • Chapter Twenty-One
  • Chapter Twenty-Two
  • Chapter Twenty-Three
  • Chapter Twenty-Four
  • Chapter Twenty-Five
  • Chapter Twenty-Six
  • Chapter Twenty-Seven
  • Chapter Twenty-Eight
  • Chapter Twenty-Nine
  • Chapter Thirty
  • Chapter Thirty-One
  • Chapter Thirty-Two
  • Chapter Thirty-Three
  • Epilogue
  • Image Gallery
  • Acknowledgments
• Playing for Keeps
  • Title Page
  • Contents
  • 1. Paris, October 1997
  • 2. Wilmington; Laney High, 1979-1981
  • 3. Chicago, November 1997
  • 4. Los Angeles, 1997; Williston, North Dakota, 1962
  • 5. Chapel Hill, 1980
  • 6. Chapel Hill, 1981
  • 7. Chapel Hill, 1982-1984
  • 8. Chicago, 1984
  • 9. New York City; Bristol, Connecticut, 1979-1984
  • 10. Chapel Hill; Chicago; Portland, 1984
  • 11. Los Angeles; Chicago, 1984, 1985
  • 12. Boston, April 1986
  • 13. New York City; Portland, 1986
  • 14. Chicago, 1986-1987
  • 15. Albany; Chicago, 1984-1988
  • 16 Chicago; Seattle, 1997
  • 17 Hamburg and Conway, Arkansas; Chicago, 1982-1987
  • 18. Detroit, the 1980s
  • 19. Chicago, 1988-1990; New York City, 1967-1971
  • 20. Chicago, 1990-1991
  • 21. Chicago; Los Angeles, 1991
  • 22. Chicago, 1997-1998
  • 23. Chicago; Portland, 1992
  • 24. La Jolla; Monte Carlo; Barcelona, 1992
  • 25. Chicago; Phoenix, 1992-1993
  • 26. Chicago, 1993
  • 27. Birmingham; Chicago, 1994-1995
  • 28. Chicago; Seattle; Salt Lake City, 1995-1997
  • 29. Chicago, 1998
  • 30. Chicago; Indianapolis, 1998
  • 31. Chicago; Salt Lake City, June 1998
  • 32. Chicago, June 1998
  • Epilogue
  • Afterword
  • Image Gallery
  • Acknowledgments
  • Author's Note
  • List of Interviews
• A Biography of David Halberstam
• Copyright