Baseball Notes

My all-time favorite player from yesteryear is Ted Williams. Teddy Ballgame. The Splendid Splinter. And while I can sit here and spout out stats all day long: .406, 521, 1839, no one helped me to understand Ted Williams the man and who he was than an incredible author named David Halberstam.

Pulitzer prize-winning author David Halberstam died today, April 23, 2007, in a car wreck at the age of 73 in the San Francisco area.

Halberstam was world-famous for his coverage of political issues, the Vietnam War, and sports. He was the author of at least 20 books, not including his countless articles, periodicals, and work at papers such as The Tennessean and The New York Times. His books about baseball include Summer of ‘49, October 1964, and The Teammates: A Portrait of Friendship. The Teammates is one of my top five all-time favorite books - it recounts a 60-year friendship between Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, Bobby Doerr, and Dom Dimaggio; all teammates on the Red Sox. Halberstam rides along as the others take a car ride to go see Williams who is dying at his Florida home. What follows is an epic story about friendship, loyalty and growing old together. While they were united by baseball early in their lives, it was that game that kept them together over the course of happiness, loss, and inevitably, death.

While sportswriting became his passion later in his career, Halberstam became famous for writing definitive accounts of the Kennedy Administration, the 1960’s, and the Vietnam War. The Best and the Brightest is considered the book that changed many American’s minds about the direction of Vietnam and how a victory seemed unlikely and that the best strategy was to leave the country. He would eventually win the Pulitzer at the age of 30 for his reporting on the Vietnam War.

One appropriate line from his bio reads:

“Perhaps no other writer has so faithfully chronicled the profound changes in America in the second half of the 20th Century and the challenges of the 21st Century.”

I strongly urge you read his books. And start with the three on baseball if you so desire. You can purchase them here, here, and here.

I can guarantee you will not be disappointed.

Have you ever read Halberstam? Tell me what you think about him.