Summer of '49

If you're a big baseball fan, especially from the northeast part of the United States, then you will probably love this book. There are lots of stories about baseball characters and some baseball history. However, this is very much a big collection of anecdotes centered around the author's childhood focus on the rivalry between the New York Yankees, especially Joe DiMaggio, and the Boston Red Sox, especially Ted Williams. Roughly a half-dozen other players from each of those teams is given somewhat less emphasis with other players and other teams barely mentioned at all. This extends all the way to the World Series with the Brooklyn Dodgers where only one player for that team gets much of any attention and it isn't Jackie Robinson. The show more best parts of the book are really the analysis of how major league baseball was managed back then, and the realization of how much it has changed to the huge business it is today. Other than that, imagine you're sitting around with similarly-minded baseball fans with nothing particularly meaningful to accomplish except be nostalgic for those good old days we keep hearing about. show less

Read this the summer of 2024, beginning it on the beach in Newport, RI and ending it in my chair in Fort Worth, TX. This year we really got more into baseball as a family as it was the first year of little league for Jeff and Ben and we conducted our second summer move in as many years, hitting stadiums 18-23 along the way. Had been excited to read this book and it did not disappoint. He is a great writer and historian. I thoroughly enjoyed how he tied this pennant race to so many other things going on in history at that time and how things like radio, TV, the war, and money impacted the game of baseball. Recommended for fans of baseball (even Red Sox fans) or students of post WW2 history.

This is one of my least favorite baseball books. But it is still about baseball, so I did enjoy it.

The author tries to make the '49 season between the Yankees and Red Sox special and historic, but it just wasn't. No records were broken. The Red Sox did not break the "curse". It wasn't DiMaggio's or Ted Williams farewell tour. There really wasn't anything special to write about. It wasn't even the '48 season, which resulted in the first one game playoff.

I enjoyed learning about the players and coaches and owners. Learning more about them as people, but overall, this book was...underwhelming.

A real baseball fan's delight. Has all the ingredients from one of baseball's golden eras - bigger than life players, writers, owners, broadcasters, and even middle management. These guys played for a living, and the games really mattered to them. Especially the Yankees, for whom a World Series winner's share was figured into their contracts (which were very meager by today's standards, to begin with). I found interesting the role of the broadcasters (esp. Mel Allen) in developing the mythology of the players and the games themselves. Having listened to a lot of games on radio myself (not of that era, but before cable TV was in most homes), I can relate to how imagination had such an impact on people's perceptions of the players and the show more teams. show less

What I most appreciated about this Halberstam baseball book was his sense of the ends and beginnings of different eras in the evolution of the game: racial integration, the dawn of televised games, the last seasons of Joe DiMaggio's career and the beginning of the years of Yankee dominance through the 1950s. A great read!

"Summer of `49" focuses on the rivalry between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees as they fought for first place during the Summer of 1949. This was before the days of the wild card and first place meant a trip to the playoffs while second place meant a trip home. The two teams fought for 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 show more 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. show less

Read this when it originally came out in the mid-80's. It was well worth revisiting for Halberstam's terrific writing and portrait of DiMaggio, as well as a reminder of why free agency exists. Ball players were essentially indentured servants, all but a handful having to return to 'real world jobs' during the off season just to get by. Also worth it for the history lesson on the ongoing Yankees-Red Sox rivalry.