Still Our National Pastime
Explore the enduring legacy of America's favorite pastime with our curated book list. From Jonathan Eig's 'Luckiest Man' to David Halberstam's 'The Teammates' and Eliot Asinof's 'Eight Men Out,' discover gripping biographies and insider stories of baseball history, including 'Ball Four' and 'The Catcher Was a Spy.'
Book
The Teammates
by David Halberstam
Now in paperback, the New York Times bestselling The Teammates -- David Halberstam's stirring tribute to the golden age of baseball and to friendship. The Teammates is the profoundly moving story of four great baseball players who have made the passage from sports icons -- when they were young and seemingly indestructible -- to men dealing with the vulnerabilities of growing older. At the core of the book is the friendship of these four very different men -- Boston Red Sox teammates Bobby Doerr, Dominic DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Ted Williams -- who remained close for more than sixty years. The book starts out in early October 2001, when Dominic DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky begin a 1,300-mile trip by car to visit their beloved friend Ted Williams, whom they know is dying. Bobby Doerr, the fourth member of this close group -- "my guys," Williams used to call them -- is unable to join them. Doerr is back in Oregon tending to his wife of sixty-three years, who has suffered a second stroke. Acclaimed author David Halberstam has given us a book -- filled with historical details and first-hand accounts -- about baseball and about something more, the richness of friendship.
Book
Luckiest Man
by Jonathan Eig
The definitive account of the life and tragic death of baseball legend Lou Gehrig. Lou Gehrig was a baseball legend—the Iron Horse, the stoic New York Yankee who was the greatest first baseman in history, a man whose consecutive-games streak was ended by a horrible disease that now bears his name. But as this definitive new biography makes clear, Gehrig’s life was more complicated—and, perhaps, even more heroic—than anyone really knew. Drawing on new interviews and more than two hundred pages of previously unpublished letters to and from Gehrig, Luckiest Man gives us an intimate portrait of the man who became an American hero: his life as a shy and awkward youth growing up in New York City, his unlikely friendship with Babe Ruth (a friendship that allegedly ended over rumors that Ruth had had an affair with Gehrig’s wife), and his stellar career with the Yankees, where his consecutive-games streak stood for more than half a century. What was not previously known, however, is that symptoms of Gehrig’s affliction began appearing in 1938, earlier than is commonly acknowledged. Later, aware that he was dying, Gehrig exhibited a perseverance that was truly inspiring; he lived the last two years of his short life with the same grace and dignity with which he gave his now-famous “luckiest man” speech. Meticulously researched and elegantly written, Jonathan Eig’s Luckiest Man shows us one of the greatest baseball players of all time as we’ve never seen him before.
Book
Eight Men Out
by Eliot Asinof
"The most thorough investigation of the Black Sox scandal on record . . . A vividly, excitingly written book."--Chicago Tribune
