The book that I was reading when Leonard died.... ( )

The summer of 1949: It was baseball's Golden Age and the year Joe DiMaggio's New York Yankees were locked in a soon-to-be classic battle with Ted Williams's Boston Red Sox for the American League pennant.

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 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. ( )

Narrative of the Red Sox/Yankee season of 1949 ( )

Two Halberstams in my top 10 baseball book list. This is a fantastic account of the 49 season, written by a true journalist, not a sportswriter. ( )