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The Teammates
 
 
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The Teammates [Audiobook] [Audio CD]

David Halberstam (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)

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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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Ted was dying, and the idea for the final trip, driving down to Florida to see him one last time, was Dominic's. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

53 Reviews
5 star:
 (41)
4 star:
 (6)
3 star:
 (2)
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 (2)
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4.5 out of 5 stars (53 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Sharing Baseball Memories, Jan 16 2004
By 
Thomas Stamper (Orlando, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Teammates (Hardcover)
Halberstam uses a car trip as an opportunity to explore the lives of Bobby Doerr, Johnny Pesky, Dom DiMaggio and Ted Williams and their relationships with one another and how baseball made their lives better. The story of Ted Williams is often told, but few have ever heard the story of Dom DiMaggio who was overshadowed by Williams and an even more famous older brother. Doerr and Pesky are equally unexplored in most baseball stories.

Much like Lawrence Ritter's classic "The Glory of their Times", Teammates captures an era of old ballplayers which makes the modern game all the more rich. But unlike Ritter's book that was more about an era, this is a story about how these players remained friends for nearly 50 years after they left the game. Here you get the stories after retirement too, and they're just as interesting.

It's much shorter and more personal than Halberstam's other baseball books. It doesn't get wrapped up in the games the way "Summer of '49" does. While I personally prefer the latter, I enjoyed this a good deal and I'm not even a Red Sox fan.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Book, Aug 13 2005
By 
Corey Joyce (St-Hubert, Quebec Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Teammates (Paperback)
If you like reading about Teddy Ball Game this is a fantastic book. It shows you a more human side to him and his friends. It was an easy read and enjoyable. Nothing more can be said besides the fact that even as a Yankee Fan you can see how Great Ted Williams was.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Life-long Lessons!, July 3 2004
By 
Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 112,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (#1 HALL OF FAME)   
This review is from: The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship (Hardcover)
When we are young, most of us idolize certain sports heroes . . . usually because of their feats on the field rather than for their characters. Author David Halberstam had the great pleasure of getting to know some of his idols when he wrote the Summer of '49 about the Yankee-Red Sox pennant race in that year. He kept up with his new friends from the Red Sox including Ted Williams, Dom DiMaggio, Bobby Doerr and Johnny Pesky after the book came out. When he learned that in 2002 about the last trip that Dom, and Johnny had taken to see Ted, Mr. Halberstam knew that he had a story. This book relates that tale.

The book recounts the backgrounds of all four players, details their friendships from the days when they were in the minor leagues through the end of their lives and provides lots of perspective on the Red Sox during the 1940s and 1950s when these remarkable players were on the team. The end of the book also has the lifetime stats for each player.

One of the intriguing parts of the book is how hard Ted Williams was on himself and his friends. It is a remarkable tale of friendship to see how others would tolerate his abuse by rolling with the punches. Behind the friendships, you get many glimpses of great character . . . character that actually makes their athletic accomplishments seem paler by comparison.

I strongly urge all Red Sox fans and parents who want their children to develop better characters to read this book, and share the story with their friends and family. I know of no better book about athletes that looks at the qualities of true greatness.

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