Good Yankees books forum

[philleotardo]

"Dynasty: 1949-1964. When Rooting for the Yankees Was Like Rooting For U.S. Steel," by Peter Golenbock. A few factual errors but a great oral history of the Yankees in that era.

I loved this one- do you recall any of the factual errors?

[Yankees13]

I finished the book on Wednesday night and it was very good. Even though we obviously know the outcome of the game, the author manages to holds the reader's interest with a lot of backstory and in-game details.

Again, there were some errors that should have been caught in editing (at one point he writes about a ball hit to RIGHT FIELD just inside the 3RD BASELINE). But overall, it was very good.

ESPN.com has an excerpt, in case anyone is interested in reading it:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...9&sportCat=mlb

Heidi

I really want to read this book, but I have a queue of about 40 books to read. I'll probably pick it up during the summer after I've made some headway on my reading list. Glad to hear it was good.

[ymike673]

I started "The Greatest Game: The Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Playoff of '78" by Richard Bradley last night and couldn't put it down!

There are a few factual errors (for example, he said Yogi was 22 [instead of 32] at the time of the Copa fight, which meant that he was 11 when he made his Yankees debut...LOL), but overall it's been very good. I was afraid it would have been biased toward the Red Sox, but it's been very even handed. In fact, he even seems to side a bit with Thurman in the Fisk vs. Munson debate.

Heidi

Just started reading it also. Another error was he had the Yankees beating the Royals in the bottom of the ninth inning of game 5 in 1977. But overall it has been a good read so far. Can't wait to see how the season ends,LOL

[jimmyclark]

I loved this one- do you recall any of the factual errors?

I know Tony Kubek was critical about Golenbock's accuracy.

A lot of these books mentioned areuite well done "Birth of a Dynasty", Mantle's "1956", ".taking on the Yankees", etc.

To mention a couple of others Jim Bouton "Ball Four". Probably the best baseball book ever written and Bouton shares some interesting stories on the Yankees of his era.

Bill Werber had a book on his playing days in the 1930s. He only played with them for a couple of years.

In the late 1980s with the death of Roger Maris and 25 years since 61* both Tony Kubek and Ralph Houk had books. I found Houk's a bit better as he talks about some decisions he made.

[philleotardo]

I'm inclined to trust Golenbock's accuracy for "Dynasty". Kubek may not like it because many parts of it are not particularly flattering, but the list of sources cited by Golenbock is extensive and includes not only players but family members, front office types, etc.

[Dustin563]

Birth of a Dynasty is a good book. It's about the 96 Yanks.

http://www.amazon.com/Birth-Dynasty-...6403282&sr=8-1

[xenadanielle]

My bookstore has a nice Yankees end-cap set up right now, on it is "O Holy Cow: The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto." I thought it was out of print but I guess in light of his passing it was re-issued. I brought home a copy today.

[Casey37]

One book that I haven't seen mentioned that I enjoyed was Taking on the Yankees. It's basically a book discussing the history of the business of baseball and how it has changed, and the Yankees and their history are discusses thoroughly in it. I found it very interesting.

Outstanding book, probably the best I've ever read concerning the Yankees in particular and baseball in general.

[JDPNYY]

My bookstore has a nice Yankees end-cap set up right now, on it is "O Holy Cow: The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto." I thought it was out of print but I guess in light of his passing it was re-issued. I brought home a copy today.

One of my favorite all time books. I reread it every once in a while. I can still hear the Scooter saying the words.

[hellonewman]

I loved this one- do you recall any of the factual errors?

I think it had mostly to do with stats ... batting averages, W-L records and such. Also, I believe he had Larsen's final pitch to Dale Mitchell in the WS perfect game as low and outside (it's pretty obvious even from the film footage that it was high and outside). It's been at least 20 years since I read the book so I confess I'm short on particulars. I do remember thinking at the time that there were a lot of errors in it, though.

[PYanks]

I finished David Halberstam's Summer of '49 a few weeks ago, and really liked it. Not having lived through that era, it is fadcinating to read about the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry then, and learn so much about players about which I don't know very much. A well-written book, it prompted me to start reading Halberstam's October 1964, which I have just started.

[MunsonNY15]

I finished David Halberstam's Summer of '49 a few weeks ago, and really liked it. Not having lived through that era, it is fadcinating to read about the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry then, and learn so much about players about which I don't know very much. A well-written book, it prompted me to start reading Halberstam's October 1964, which I have just started.

Summer of '49 is in my "to be read" pile. Glad to hear it's a good one.

Heidi

[yankeeman61]

Summer of '49 is in my "to be read" pile. Glad to hear it's a good one.

Heidi

I've read Summer of '49 several times over the years. It's the best Yankee book I've ever read. It was great reading about the Big Dago and how much of an impact he had, especially within the Yankee - Red Sox rivalry.

A rare one I would recommend is Joe Pepitone's "Joe You Could Have Made Us Proud". Can't recall who he wrote it with but it was quite entertaining, especially his take on the harmonica incident. Bouton's "Ball Four" was also highly entertaining, although much of it was probably BS.

[PYanks]

I just finished October 1964 by David Halberstam. It was very well written, and interesting. It is an account of the 1964 Yankees and Cardinals. Most of the book is backstory and fascinating mini-biographies and stories of players on both teams. The actual World Series stuff is in the last few chapters. Of course, the Yankees lost in 7 games, but this book is worth the read for its historical value. I detected a slight Cardinals favoritim, but that does not really detract from a book that helped fill in for me something about a Yankee era I did not live through. One of the most interesting charcters in this book is Bob Gibson. I would recommend it.

[hellonewman]

Bouton's "Ball Four" was also highly entertaining, although much of it was probably BS.

Why do you say that?

*********

"Summer of '49" was superb but I was somewhat disappointed by "October 1964." I thought it lacked momentum in the sense that, so much of it was told in flashback (from the perspective of 1964 looking backward), I didn't get a really good feel for the rhythms of those pennant races and how the drama built. It seemed like every time I was getting drawn in, it was time for someone to go on a memory-lane walk about the scout who saw them on the sandlot in 1947 or some such.

[penguin4]

Ball Four was pretty accurate, as I understand it. At the time, some people denied it, because they didn't want to fess up that they were cheating on their wives or popping pills or that sort of thing (I believe Bouton himself got divorced a few years later for a similar reason), but many were amused by it. If the stories he told about Mickey Mantle weren't true, in time it would certainly come out that very similar incidents *did* happen -- Mantle himself would devote an entire autobiography to such things; many professional athletes seemed to follow suit on that tell-all stuff. The only players who seemed continually to deny it were the ones he really didn't like (i.e. pitching coach Eddie O'Brien). Bouton even once said that he used a bit of discretion -- he kept the stories about the sleeping with other women mostly anonymous (except for one about Gary Bell which he had no problem reprinting, I think), because he didn't want to hurt families and that sort of thing.

From the little I've seen Bouton first-hand, he does come off a bit of a pompous self-promoter, but hey, the guy can definitely tell a good story -- and I think if the book were mostly lies, it wouldn't have had Bowie Kuhn running for cover, asking him to sign a statement publicly denying any of this ever occurred.

[__starr69]

Just finished reading "The Subway Series Reader", an anthology on the 2000 Subway Series. Most of the pieces link together the Subway Series' of old (specifically the 40's and 50's) and the 2000 Series. I felt it was a little biased towards the Mets/Dodgers/Giants, but overall a good read.

I just ordered "Summer of '49" and I think that'll be my train reading when this semester finally ends!

[BillBuckner]

Luckiest Man and The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty were two of the greatest sports books (and in the case of Luckiest Man, biographies) that I've ever read. My reading list is kind of full for the moment, but I have my eye on that new Yankee Stadium coffee table book.

[Toaderly]

Luckiest Man was great. I only wish it had been written ten years sooner so it had more primary interviews.

A Pitcher's Story by Roger Angell (about the guy to my left) is also very good. But I've never read anything bad by Roger Angell.

I've always been a big fan of Murderer's Row by G.H. Fleming, which is a compilation of newspaper articles and other primary sources from the 1927 season. Waite Hoyt had a huge hand as a consultant in the editing process, as well as wrote the forward a couple months before he died -- and it's probably one of the few things ever written about the '27 team by one of the players themselves (ghostwritten columns don't count). [Note: It may be out of print, but most libraries have it, and used copies are always floating around the web.]

Baseball As I Have Known It by Fred Lieb is another one of my favorites. It's not Yankee-specific, but Lieb was a sportswriter for over seventy years, a significant portion of which was based in New York, so there are chapters on Ruth, Gehrig, Hal Chase, and Carl Mays, among lots of other goodies, a lot of which you may not have heard before.

That Murderer's Row book reminded me of a Joe D book I read a year or so ago. I can't remember the name and can't find it on the net, either. It was a compilation of newspaper articles covering his entire baseball career and his life after baseball. I picked it up at the local library. I'll have to go back and find the title. One thing that stood out was that the NY media was just as fickle back in his day as they are now. If he played poorly, they ripped him apart; if he played well, he was a national hero.

[FloridaYankeegirl]

My favorites are Luckiest Man, Bleeding Pinstripes, Birth of a Dynasty and 101 reasons to Love the Yankees (and 10 reasons to hate the Red Sox). The Yankee Stadium Official Retrospective is a great coffee table book with excellent pics. I am currently reading Unbeatable about the 1998 championship season.

[MunsonNY15]

I'm almost finished with "Game of My Life: Memorable Stories of Yankees Baseball" by David Buscema. It's pretty good. He interviewed Yankees from Tommy Henrich to Derek Jeter about what they consider to be their most special game. Some are obvious (Dent picked his HR against Boston) and others aren't (Righetti didn't pick his no hitter).

Each chapter is dedicated to one player and his game and contains a short bio of the player (childhood, how he came to the Yankees, etc.) and then has a nice back story about the game from the player's perspective. I'd recommend it.

Heidi

[penguin4]

That Murderer's Row book reminded me of a Joe D book I read a year or so ago. I can't remember the name and can't find it on the net, either. It was a compilation of newspaper articles covering his entire baseball career and his life after baseball. I picked it up at the local library. I'll have to go back and find the title. One thing that stood out was that the NY media was just as fickle back in his day as they are now. If he played poorly, they ripped him apart; if he played well, he was a national hero.

Was it a big coffee table book with lots of photos? If so, I have it. The Daily News put it out right after his death with a lot of their articles. Other than the fact that Loopy wrote the forward, I thought it was well done. You're making me want to go digging through my closet to find it, now.

[PYanks]

Just finished Five O'Clock Lightning, by Harvey Frommer. It was definitely a well-researched book about the 1927 Yanks, but didn't make me feel particularly close to the team, as compared to David Halberstam's style in his books. I felt like I was reading a collection of snippets or the back of a bunch of baseball cards. There are a lot of statistics and game results, and he focuses on the Babe Ruth-Lou Gehrig home run race of that season. The last chapter is sort of grim as Frommer enumerates the team after the 1927 season, in order of their deaths, and tells us how each one died.

[penguin4]

Just finished Five O'Clock Lightning, by Harvey Frommer. It was definitely a well-researched book about the 1927 Yanks, but didn't make me feel particularly close to the team, as compared to David Halberstam's style in his books. I felt like I was reading a collection of snippets or the back of a bunch of baseball cards. There are a lot of statistics and game results, and he focuses on the Babe Ruth-Lou Gehrig home run race of that season. The last chapter is sort of grim as Frommer enumerates the team after the 1927 season, in order of their deaths, and tells us how each one died.

I was browsing through it in a bookstore because that subject always interests me, and I have to say I was pretty disappointed with the little I read. It's hard to judge a book by a few pages, of course, but it just felt kind of superficial to me -- like nothing we didn't know -- and not really all that well-written, either. I was curious to hear the thoughts of someone who actually read it.

[PYanks]

I was browsing through it in a bookstore because that subject always interests me, and I have to say I was pretty disappointed with the little I read. It's hard to judge a book by a few pages, of course, but it just felt kind of superficial to me -- like nothing we didn't know -- and not really all that well-written, either. I was curious to hear the thoughts of someone who actually read it.

I'd not recommend this book. Your browse was right on: not very well written (the author repeats himself several times) and superficial. Actually, since he focuses on Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig so much, Big Bam and The Luckiest Man are far and away better. If you're into trivia, then Five o'Clock Lightning might be of interest, but not as a story of the 1927 season.