October 1964 (1994)
David Halberstam is undoubtedly one of the great journalists of the past few decades. As the New York Times correspondent in Vietnam in the early 60's, he was one of the most influential media voices on the War and The Best and the Brightest was one of the first really important books on what had gone wrong. The success of the book freed him from the grind of daily newspaper work, but in the succeeding years he has produced books on The Times, the auto industry and various sports, almost all of which are characterized by reportage of the highest quality. I particularly liked The Reckoning, wherein he recounts the fall of the American and the rise of the Japanese auto industries and Breaks of the Game, in which he details one year in the life of the Portland Trail Blazers and which I maintain is the only good basketball book ever written. And, of course, he wrote the terrific Summer of '49, about the rivalry between the Red Sox of Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio's Yankees.
In October 1964 he returns to baseball, this time to the World Series showdown between the Yankees and the Cardinals, and combines the detailed reporting for which he is known, with a theme similar to that of The Reckoning. For what truly interests him about that year, a seemingly ordinary enough season in most respects, is the aspect of race and how the different teams dealt with it. He explores the manner in which the Cardinals, through their commitment to finding and developing black players, were leading a revolution in the game of baseball, building their team around superior speed and athleticism and the burning desire to succeed. He contrasts them with the Yankees, an increasingly fossilized institution, refusing to use black players, attempting to quash free spirits and unable to replace declining stars like Mantle and Ford.
Now if, like me, you grew up listening to Bill White and Phil Rizzuto and Tim McCarver broadcast baseball games, many of the stories in here will be familiar. In fact, I became conscious for perhaps the first time of the difference between a great reporter and great writer as I was reading this book. I really noticed that large swaths of the book are simple regurgitation of interviews and the judgments about the game that are being related are not even his own, they are the interviewees. If Mel Stottlemyre told him that the key to pitching was throwing breaking balls and keeping the ball down, then that's Halberstam's belief. I don't know whether he actually doesn't know all that much about the game or simply chose to believe the professionals, but I found a lot of the opinion that he offers to be unconsidered. His editorial voice wafts very faintly through the book, emerging only on the racial and labor issues (Curt Flood of the Cardinals would be the first man to challenge baseball's restrictive contracts, paving the way for free agency). Much of the rest reads like a reporter conveying the players' impressions after a game. There are also some really annoying repetitions in the book, redundancies which any editor should have caught, assuming editors still exist.
But on balance I liked the book. His essential "changing of the
guard" premise is absolutely correct. Black players completely dominated
the 60's and 70's, not merely for athletic reasons but also because they
were simply hungrier and had more to gain (for much the same reason, Irish
then Jews and Italians enjoyed their hey day earlier in the century and
Latin American players are in the ascendancy now). The more aggressive
signing of black talent also led to a long period of dominance by the National
League after years of Yankee invincibility. This racial theme gives
the book a greater social resonance than most sports fare which, combined
with the baseball lore, would seem to make the book an ideal vehicle to
teach young adults about the civil rights struggles in a format they'd
find interesting and entertaining.
(Reviewed:27-Mar-00)
Grade: (B)
