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mrdashwood's review against another edition
4.0
This is as engagingly written book as one might find, with Kevin Cook carrying the story along at an energetic current that matches his title. The connection between six separate narratives is made at the 1947 World Series, an all-Metro-New-York affair that pitted the New York Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers. Even though one might guess the outcome, Cook still manages to make the game accounts exciting reading.
Having got the high praise out the way, let me raise my minor quibbles. Despite Cook's best efforts, the book loses its focus a little after the end of the World Series, as the six men go very different ways in baseball. There's a lot of the baseball classic, The Boys of Summer, in Cook's book, as a sizable part of the it captures the long afternoons and evenings of lives that climax (for the players, at least) so soon. For some reason, while the pre-Series build-up captures something of a 'life and times' approach, the aftermath seems more personal, less involved with trends in American society as a whole.
Cook also, I think, missed an opportunity to set a dramatic opposition between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees that the '47 series captured and which set the tone of succeeding encounters between the two teams. He describes with some enthusiasm the raucous community setting of the Brooklyn Dodgers. His handling of the Yankees, though, seems less deft. By the time their run of post-war pennants ended in 1964, the Yankees had become a sporting epitome of Corporate America. Larry MacPhail's drunken post-Series rampage that led to his departure, and the firing of Bucky Harris after the 1948 season were perfectly positioned at the other side of the story from the description of the Dodgers' community to make the point that the Yankees had, as it were, sold their soul to Satan for a mess of pennants.
Having quibbled, let me conclude with more praise. The story manages to incorporate most deftly baseball before, after and during the war, when many of the best players were on temporary leave of absence from the league, and changes to the manufacture of the ball deadened it and ended the American League's high-scoring era of the 1930s. Historians, popular or academic, too often treat the war as a full stop, but the continuities that span wartime years are quite telling. Cook has ensured my calendar year ended on a high note.
Having got the high praise out the way, let me raise my minor quibbles. Despite Cook's best efforts, the book loses its focus a little after the end of the World Series, as the six men go very different ways in baseball. There's a lot of the baseball classic, The Boys of Summer, in Cook's book, as a sizable part of the it captures the long afternoons and evenings of lives that climax (for the players, at least) so soon. For some reason, while the pre-Series build-up captures something of a 'life and times' approach, the aftermath seems more personal, less involved with trends in American society as a whole.
Cook also, I think, missed an opportunity to set a dramatic opposition between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees that the '47 series captured and which set the tone of succeeding encounters between the two teams. He describes with some enthusiasm the raucous community setting of the Brooklyn Dodgers. His handling of the Yankees, though, seems less deft. By the time their run of post-war pennants ended in 1964, the Yankees had become a sporting epitome of Corporate America. Larry MacPhail's drunken post-Series rampage that led to his departure, and the firing of Bucky Harris after the 1948 season were perfectly positioned at the other side of the story from the description of the Dodgers' community to make the point that the Yankees had, as it were, sold their soul to Satan for a mess of pennants.
Having quibbled, let me conclude with more praise. The story manages to incorporate most deftly baseball before, after and during the war, when many of the best players were on temporary leave of absence from the league, and changes to the manufacture of the ball deadened it and ended the American League's high-scoring era of the 1930s. Historians, popular or academic, too often treat the war as a full stop, but the continuities that span wartime years are quite telling. Cook has ensured my calendar year ended on a high note.
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