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| Manufacturer | - |
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| Brand | David Halberstam |
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| Product Id | 2007919 |
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| User Reviews and Ratings | 3 (1 ratings) 3 out of 5 stars |
| UPC | 461034062295 |
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October 1964 (Paperback)
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The book is absolutely superb in analyzing the two teams that met in the 1964 World Series; the only letdown is the section on the Series itself, which seems like an anticlimax. Readers of Bouton's book Ball Four will recognize a number of anecdotes.
Every year I try to read a baseball book to get ready for spring training and the new season. This year, I chose October 1964, David Halberstam's look back at one of the most exciting and compelling World Series matchups of the modern era on the 30th anniversary of its occurrence (that's 1994, for those of you like me who prefer words to math). The opening chapter profiles the state of the New York Yankees as the '64 season unfolded; the second chapter did the same for the St. Louis Cardinals. From this, even those readers who don't have the entire list of World Series winners memorized can figure out who is still going to be playing at the end. The book continues to alternate every few chapters between the two teams, so that by the time the Series starts the reader is as intimately acquainted with the history and personnel of these two franchises as any baseball fan of the era. You might wonder how a seven-game World Series can take 475 pages to describe (the first game of the Series itself begins on Page 401). That's the genius of Halberstam: Before he gets down to recounting the twists and turns of the championship, he deftly builds up the reader's knowledge of everything essential that came before. Of course there are profiles of key players on each team, but he also weaves in the history of each franchise, the history of baseball itself, and the social climate in which the season and Series were played. One of the things that makes 1964 such a great season to read now is that it was the cusp of what became the modern era of baseball. Free agency had not yet been implemented (in fact, the player who would be most responsible for forcing the owners' hands on that matter was Curt Flood, who was playing for the Cardinals in 1964), but player salaries had begun to rise (modestly; we're talking about five-digit annual salaries, not the eight-digit salaries of today), and more tellingly, young players were no longer so easily controlled in any way except who they played for. Old-school managers and front-office personnel who began working in baseball during the old military-style, my-way-or-the-highway, all-white era were baffled at young players who chafed at too many rules and thought there was more to life than a game. (They also held ambivalent and racist attitudes about the black players they reluctantly signed, even 17 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.) It seems every generation must have its "kids today!" moment. My friend Beth told me she loved October 1964 even though she doesn't like baseball, and after reading it I can understand why. Yes, it's nominally about baseball, but it's also about the way American life and society changed in the 1960s in ways both incremental and radical. (In that sense, it's a perfect companion to Halberstam's [The Children], about the Civil Rights Movement.) And it's written by a man who was a master at presenting a complex subject clearly and who always let the personalities of the era take center stage.
In 1958, my family reluctantly switched from rooting for the former Brooklyn Dodgers to rooting for the Yankees. It was not the same experience at all. When the Mets came along, we tried to appreciate them but at least in the first couple of seasons at the Polo Grounds, there were real obstacles, like the ghosts of the Giants and the early, cartoonish Mets' level of play. So for my formative years, I became a Yankees fan and this book reminded me of the heartbreak of 1964, when it became clear to all that Mantle, Maris, Ford and Berra could not carry the team to its former heights. Which maybe explains why reading Halberstam's classic book was an emotional experience for me, especially since he was wise enough to scatter references to the former Dodgers and the future "amazing" Mets. Apart from that, I stand in awe of Halberstam's profiles of the Cardinal and Yankee players and his recaps of the regular season as well as the climactic World Series.
Excellent book by a great author. He reports on an era in sports and the American culture that was unique. On one hand was the long-dominant Yankee team, almost entirely composed of white ballplayers, representing the old guard that was in decline. On the other hand, the Cardinal team, much more integrated with a rich cast of characters, was the up-and-coming young team that relied on speed and youth. The fact that these teams came together in the 1964 Series is quite a coincidence, given the tumultuous civil rights struggle going on in America at the same time. And it almost didn't happen - a historic collapse by the Phillies in the NL and a injury to Boog Powell in the AL allowed both teams to make the Series.
Probably one of the 5 best baseball books I've ever read, and take a peek, I've read a few. Halberstam is a master.
Well told story of the 1964 baseball season and the world series between the Cardinals and the Yankees. Peppered with colorful characters and their antics.
Great baseball book, not a great year for the Phillies.
David Halberstam's October 1964, a classic baseball book, catapults me back to the first season that I was fully immersed in the game, the true starting point of my baseball fandom. Halberstam's writing is smooth and natural, a joy to read. The title suggest this to be a chronicle of the 1964 Yankees-Cardinals World Series, but it is much more a chronicle of the teams' seasons with insightful profiles of the key players and personalities that played a role that year.
This is a good book. It's easily the best sports-related book I've ever read, and that includes comparison to another sports-related book by the same author. That book was aimed at zealot fans who love anecdote after anecdote about ball players they already know a lot about. This book is in the finest tradition of enlightening, engrossing, historical reporting, albeit of sports. It was well past half way in reading this before I stopped thinking about how it had much more in common with the award-winning book about the Civil War battle at Antietam, Landscape Turned Red, then with the author's own book about the 1949 baseball championship. This book covered the events leading up to the main event. It studied the main characters in depth, and not just in anecdote form. It covered it all with societal and economic overlays, and blended it altogether, while all the time never leaving sight of the fact this was book about sports which sports fans would appreciate...as would non-sports fans. If I have one criticism of the book, it is in the way the author goes from painting an overview of the tremendous attributes of many of the characters, but then seemingly contradicts it all by pointing out frequently what bad judgments and shortcomings they exhibit in specific moments. I admit I haven't read a ton of sports books, so maybe I'm overly impressed. On the other hand, this book was a gift to me from someone who reads a lot and whom I've never seen read anything other than sports-related books. He thought it was worth sharing with me. I take that as his recommendation, too.
Though I'm not as interested in this era as I am in the the 1949 season Halberstam documents in his other great baseball book, this is the better book. Halberstam has a much better grasp here on the interplay of baseball with other social tensions at play in the 1960s and his players read more like real people than the homespun heroes of the Summer of '49.