Me and Dimaggio: A Baseball Fan Goes in Search of His Gods

Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0671505041, Hardcover)

All real baseball fans can conjure up the moment the game first cast its spell on them. For Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, it came through the static of the radio, spurring his imagination to witness vividly a three home-run performance in the late 1940s by the great Joe DiMaggio. Cut to half a lifetime later: Lehmann-Haupt, a New York Times book critic, decides to set off on a year-long journey into the heart of America's national pastime. Less intent on recapturing that first moment as on exploring the game's sometimes mystical and continual appeal, he follows a season from spring training to winter meetings. Me and DiMaggio is memoir cloaked in reportage, a tricky melding of genres that's never quite sure whether it's journal or journalism. Still, there are so many good insights into the game here--and a fascinating, if oddly sad, encounter with the elusive DiMaggio himself--that if Lehmann-Haupt doesn't quite reach the fences, he at least gets himself into scoring position.