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Summary
Summary
Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Dom DiMaggio, and Johnny Pesky were all members of the famed 1940's Boston Red Sox. Their legendary careers led the Red Sox to a pennant championship and ensured the men a place in sports history. David Halberstam, the bestselling author of the baseball classic Summer of '49, has followed the members of the 1949 championship Boston Red Sox team for years, especially Williams, Doerr, DiMaggio, and Pesky. In this extremely moving book, Halberstam reveals how these four teammates became friends, and how that friendship thrived for more than 60 years. The book opens with Pesky and DiMaggio travelling to see the ailing Ted Williams in Florida. It's the last time they will see him. The journey is filled with nostalgia and memories, but seeing Ted is a shock. The most physically dominating of the four friends, Ted now weighs only 130 pounds and is hunched over in a wheelchair. Dom, without even thinking about it, starts to sing opera and old songs like 'Me and My Shadow' to his friend. Filled with stories of their glory days with the Boston Red Sox, memories of legendary plays and players, and the reaction of the remaining three to Ted Williams' recent death, The Teammates offers us a rare glimpse into the lives of these celebrated men-and great insight into the nature of loyalty and friendship.
Author Notes
David Halberstam was born on April 10, 1934 in New York City and later attended Harvard University. After graduating in 1955, Halberstam worked at a small daily newspaper until he attained a position at the Nashville Tennessean.
Halberstam has written over 20 books including The Children, a written account of his coverage of the Civil Rights Movement; The Best and Brightest, which was a bestseller; and The Game and October, 1964, both detailing his fascination of sports. Halberstam also won a Pulitzer Prize for his reports on the Vietnam War while working for the New York Times. He was killed in a car crash on April 23, 2007 at the age of 73.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Famed journalist and baseball aficionado Halberstam (Summer of '49) presents a short but sweet account of the lives and friendship of four ballplayers from the legendary Boston Red Sox teams of the 1940s: Ted Williams, Dominic DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky and Bobby Doerr. Told in a series of flashbacks as DiMaggio and Pesky drive from Massachusetts to Florida to see an ailing Williams for what was probably their last time, Halberstam's story is less a biography and more a reverie for "men of a certain generation, born right at the end of World War I" who "had seized on baseball as their one chance to get ahead in America." The book tells the various ways each player "shared an era," from their childhoods to their first meetings through their long tenures with the Red Sox. As in his other sports books, Halberstam has a great eye for the telling detail behind an athlete's facade, whether it is Williams's sense of himself as "a scared, unwanted, unloved kid from a miserable home" or Pesky's stoic acceptance of being blamed for the Red Sox's loss in the seventh game of the 1946 World Series, when in fact-as Halberstam clearly shows-it was not Pesky's fault at all. Fans of Halberstam's work will be satisfied by his chapter-long description of that crucial World Series game. But that is merely the more obviously exciting part of a book in which the main pleasures are more quiet glimpses of the four friends, including Doerr's calming influence over the more explosive Williams, DiMaggio's heroic fight against Paget's disease and the friends' final, touching meeting with Williams in Florida. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Affectionate, informed, and smooth-as-cream portrait of four Boston Red Sox greats and their abiding friendship over many years. Even back then, it was "something unusual for baseball: four men who played for one team, who became good friends, and remained friends for the rest of their lives." Now, writes Halberstam (Firehouse, 2002, etc.), with free agency creating volatility in the rosters and salaries serving to lessen the connection between teammates, this story of Ted Williams, Dom DiMaggio, Bobby Doerr, and Johnny Pesky is especially poignant. All four were Bosox stars in the 1940s and Halberstam re-creates many of the great moments of that decade, though perhaps even more enjoyable here are the sweet nuggets and inside observations of the men--of Pesky taking the fall for a bad play by Leon Culberson that lost the 1946 World Series because of the code mandating one player never point a finger at another, and reminiscing of Yankee pitcher Spud Chandler, "God, he was mean. He'd hit you in the ass, just for the sheer pleasure of it," and tuning in to excerpts from the Ted Williams Lecture Series. As ever, Halberstam, always a welcome sportswriter, finely delineates the personalities: Doerr's preternatural emotional equilibrium, the guileless Pesky, Williams's contentiousness, animal energy, and generosity. He also provides enough family history to give a sense of how extraordinary it was these four men came to be such great players, and how each in turn readily acknowledged their great good fortune at having been able to be part of the game at all. And the story lightly revolves around a car trip by Pesky, DiMaggio, and humorist Dick Flavin for a last visit with the rapidly dwindling Williams, highlighting the fact that all of the men may soon be gone and with them a classy style of play no longer in evidence. A string of pearly anecdotes that reverberate far beyond the diamond. (22 b&w photographs, not seen) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Lifelong friendships are as rare as they are treasured. This moving little book from celebrated reporter Halberstam tells the story of one such friendship among four teammates on the Boston Red Sox baseball team of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, Bobby Doerr, and Dom DiMaggio were devoted to one another for nearly 50 years after their playing careers ended, and the friendship still exists today among the survivors. In late 2001, Ted Williams was dying. Pesky and DiMaggio wanted to see him one more time. In the aftermath of September 11, flying wasn't an option, prompting the two octogenarians to drive (with the help of a Boston TV personality) from New England to Florida to see their friend. (Doerr was unable to make the journey.) With uncommon sensitivity, Halberstam recounts the trip and celebrates the life of this memorable friendship. Williams was the dominant personality and the glue that held the group together. (The joke was that Dom's brother Joe's record 56-game hitting streak was insignificant compared to the 30,000 consecutive arguments Williams won within the group.) There are anecdotes of the four men's playing days and summaries of their satisfying lives in retirement, but what brings the story full circle and gives it added depth are the visits with the very ill Williams--visits in which the twinkle-eyed curmudgeon showed brief sparks of the man his friends had loved for almost 60 years. This account of good people living full lives and appreciating the experience will move readers in the same way that Tuesdays with Morrie did. --Wes Lukowsky
Library Journal Review
Upon his death last year, Williams-arguably the game's greatest hitter-was bizarrely placed by his son into a state of frozen limbo at a cryonic facility. Halberstam here gives "Teddy Ballgame" the dignified commemoration he deserves through the memories of the 60-year friendship between Williams and Boston teammates from the 1940s-Bobby Doerr, Dom DiMaggio, and Johnny Pesky. The book, a portrait of both a particular sports era and a lasting friendship that transcended it, includes the men's moving final visit with their dying friend. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
