Pursuing our pastime in print

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam wrote several books that chronicled major events in America.

He was, in my mind, an artist that used words and stories rather than paint. And he put his work, not on canvas, but on the backdrop of history.

He wrote extensively on politics, world events, and history.

But in two of his books (“Summer of ’49” and “October 1964”) Halberstam does an excellent job of capturing the passion and pageantry of baseball, and in doing so he held up a photograph of what America looked like years ago. In 1949 the competition to get to the World Series was fierce in both the American League and the National League.

Halberstam’s book begins: “In the years immediately following World War II, professional baseball mesmerized the American people as it never had before and never would again. Baseball, more than almost anything else, seemed to symbolize normalcy and a return to life in America as it had been before Pearl Harbor.”

The summer of 1949 in the American League, the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees fought it out for the pennant. In the National League, the heated competition was between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the St. Louis Cardinals.

The symmetry between the two leagues was indeed amazing; but Halberstam focused on the Red Sox and the Yankees, providing vivid details of the players, the games, and how the American League season unfolded.

In the end, in the American League the Yankees took first place with a 9757 record. Boston was the closest second it could possibly be, with a 96-58 mark.

In the National League the numbers were the same. Brooklyn was 97-57. The Cardinals were second at 96-58.

So the Dodgers and Yankees made the World Series entirely a New York affair, as they had done twice before, and as they would do four more times during the 1950s.

But the heart of the book tells how the Yankees got there, and of their ongoing rivalry with Boston. Along the way, the reader is given an interesting look into the way things were those many decades ago.

For instance, he made it clear that sports reporters did things differently in that era.

In 1949 it was before all of the games were televised; and before the internet; and before anyone could get the details of the game on a smart phone.

The write-up of the games in the newspaper was something that fans anxiously looked forward to each morning, or in the case of evening newspapers, each day after work.

Major league cities had several competing newspapers in those days, each of them with at least one writer whose entire job was to write about baseball for much of the year.

The country had made a transition to radio, and the fans loved it, but most games were still played during the day while people were at work. Some people had jobs that enabled them to tune in at work. Others didn’t.

The really true baseball fans, just like those today, wanted a lot of details about each game.

They couldn’t actually go home and turn on ESPN, but they could certainly read the newspapers. Some fans read two or three each day.

Halberstam wrote that the ball players and the newspaper men “were friends, but never peers.”

One group was made up of some of the most talented athletes in the country. The other group wrote about their performance.

The sports journalists of the day knew that some

subjects could never be written about. For instance, if a player was frequently drunk, the writers knew about it, but that information was not a part of their reporting.

“The sportswriters loved the game, their jobs, and the prestige it gave them on the paper,” Halberstam wrote. “They were not about to make waves.”

Among the writers there was an understanding that they not only had an obligation to write about baseball, but to protect it as well.

And they did a good job at both. They delivered baseball to the next generation, and preserved a record that many of us can appreciate.

Halberstam produced another insightful book called “October 1964,” telling of how the Yankees, at the end of their mid-century dynasty, met the up-and-coming St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. Halberstam took a deep look into the lives of players like Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, and Curt Flood, and simultaneously examined the social problems that they and all of America faced at that time.

It is worthwhile reading for sure. In fact, if you are a baseball fan who likes to read, Halberstam has to be on your shelf.

— David Wilson, EdD, of Springdale, is a former high school principal and is the communications director for the Transit and Parking Department at the University of Arkansas. His book, Learning Every Day, is available on Amazon. You may e-mail him at dwnotes@ hotmail.com. The opinions expressed are those of the author.