The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship

Halberstam, David

ISBN 10: 1401397492 ISBN 13: 9781401397494

Publisher: Hyperion, 2003

Synopsis

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

About this title

About the Author:

David Halberstam is one of America’s most distinguished journalists and historians. After graduating from Harvard in 1955, he covered the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement, then was sent overseas by the New York Times to report on the war in Vietnam. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his Vietnam reporting at the age of thirty. His last fifteen books (which include The Best and the Brightest and Hyperion’s Firehouse and The Teammates) have all been national bestsellers. He lives in New York City.

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

About this edition

• Publisher: Hyperion
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1401397492
• ISBN 13: 9781401397494
• Binding: Audio CD
• Number of pages: 5