Me and Dimaggio: A Baseball Fan Goes in Search of His Gods - Hardcover

Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671505041 ISBN 13: 9780671505042

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1986

Synopsis

Offering a behind-the-scenes look at the players, owners, promoters, and reporters of baseball, this book follows a year in baseball and all its rituals, from spring training to the World Series to the Winter Executive Meetings

About this title

Review

All real baseball fans can conjure up the moment the game first cast its spell on them. For Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, it came through the static of the radio, spurring his imagination to witness vividly a three home-run performance in the late 1940s by the great Joe DiMaggio. Cut to half a lifetime later: Lehmann-Haupt, a New York Times book critic, decides to set off on a year-long journey into the heart of America's national pastime. Less intent on recapturing that first moment as on exploring the game's sometimes mystical and continual appeal, he follows a season from spring training to winter meetings. Me and DiMaggio is memoir cloaked in reportage, a tricky melding of genres that's never quite sure whether it's journal or journalism. Still, there are so many good insights into the game here--and a fascinating, if oddly sad, encounter with the elusive DiMaggio himself--that if Lehmann-Haupt doesn't quite reach the fences, he at least gets himself into scoring position.

From the Back Cover

Throughout Christopher Lehmann-Haupt's season of innings spent as a baseball reporter, he was haunted by the 1948 game that first made him a fan - a game in which Joe DiMaggio hit three home runs against the Cleveland Indians. Ultimately, he found himself confronting DiMaggio with a story that he did not want to believe, but that had brought him face-to-face with the fantasies of an entire generation of baseball fans.Me and DiMaggio narrates this remarkable series of adventures and misadventures that took New York Times book reviewer Christopher Lehmann-Haupt around the country on an unusual personal mission - to follow a year in baseball and all its rituals, from spring training through the World Series and to the winter executive meetings. The result is a behind-the-scenes look at the entire cast of a season: the players, the owners, the promoters, and, of course, the reporters.By turns funny, audacious, gossipy, and eloquent, Me and DiMaggio takes on a dramatic year and makes it into an experience for all seasons. (6 X 9, 304 pages)

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0671505041
• ISBN 13: 9780671505042
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 303