Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship
- Book Review,
by David Halberstam
Amazon.com
As baseball legend Ted Williams lay dying in Florida, his old Boston Red Sox teammates Johnny Pesky and Dom DiMaggio piled into a car and drove 1,300 miles to see their friend. Another member of the close-knit group, Bobby Doerr, remained in Oregon to tend to his wife who had suffered a stroke. Besides providing a poignant travelogue of the elderly Pesky and DiMaggio's trip, David Halberstam's The Teammates goes back in time to profile the men as young ballplayers. Although it is enlightening to learn about Doerr, Pesky, and DiMaggio, the leader of the group and star of the book is Williams. Halberstam portrays the notoriously moody and difficult Williams as a complex man: driven by a rough childhood and a fiercely competitive nature to become perhaps the greatest pure hitter of all time while also being a magnetic personality and loving friend. While there is nothing exceptionally unusual about old men who have stayed friends (plenty of people stay friends, after all), baseball gives this particular relationship a unique makeup. Unlike most friendships, that of Williams, Doerr, Pesky, and DiMaggio was viewed all summer long by hooting, hollering Red Sox fans. As such, their bond is forged both of individual accomplishment, win-loss records, numerous road trips, and, since they played for the Red Sox, annual doses of disappointment. Halberstam, author of Summer of '49 and October 1964 is the ideal writer to tell two equally intriguing stories, both rich in America's pastime. Although he occasionally drops himself into the narrative, one expects that of Halberstam and gladly accepts it in exchange for the highly readable exposition infused with poetic majesty that has become his trademark. --John Moe
From Publishers Weekly
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. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From AudioFile
The backdrop for this history of four lifelong friends--once Red Sox teammates--is the trip two of them, Johnny Pesky and Dom DiMaggio, made down the East Coast two years ago to visit a third, Ted Williams, who was dying. (Bobby Doerr, the fourth, had to remain at home in Oregon with his ailing wife.) The author uses this trek to digress on the sagas of these great men who "seized on baseball as their one chance to get ahead in America." Halberstam reflects upon the immigrant experience, the changing nature of the game, the perennial spirit of competition, and friendship's essence as he describes, thrillingly, several of the team's unforgettable moments. Tate Donovan's articulate narration allows the listener to focus, foursquare, on the author's words in this deeply affectionate treatment of very special lives and times. M.J.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From Booklist
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
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Dan Shaughnessy, Boston Globe
"Halberstam's new masterpiece. "
Lev Grossman, Time magazine
"A glorious, flaming, autumnal epilogue."
Charles McGrath, New York Times Book Review
"Elegant . . . a line drive stroked smartly and with delicate bat control."
Rick Telander, Chicago Sun-Times
"A crystalline gem of work about old pals, in theory, but really about everything there is."
Richard J. Tofel, Wall Street Journal
"Insightful . . . a touching essay on male friendship."
Booklist
"This account of good people living full lives . . . will move people the same way that Tuesdays with Morrie did."
Dan Shaughnessy, The Boston Globe
"Halberstam's new masterpiece."
Michael Kay, The Yankee Entertainment Sports Network
"One of the best books you'll ever read."
Weekly Standard
"Knowledgeable, touching, and beautifully written."
Newport News Press
"A complex character study of four strong, driven men."
Book Description
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.
Download Description
Halberstam frequently interviewed Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Dom DiMaggio, and Johnny Peske. In this book, Halberstam offers a rare glimpse into the special lives and friendships of these men. But it focuses on the more than 50-year friendship among them and serves as a testament to loyalty and the bonds of friendship. Complete with stories of their glory days with the Boston Red Sox, their lifelong friendship, and the reaction of the remaining three to the death of Ted Williams, THE TEAMMATES is a must-buy for anyone who wants to know more about these legends but more importantly, for those who want a close look at the type of friendship that comes only through sharing trials and triumphs over many years.
About the Author
David Halberstam, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Vietnam at the age of 30, is one of America's best-known journalists and historians. His last 13 books have all been national bestsellers. Both The Best and the Brightest, the story of how and why America went to war in Vietnam, and Summer of '49, about the Yankee-Red Sox pennant race, went to number one on the New York Times bestseller list. He lives in New York City.
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