The Men of Autumn: An Oral History of the 1949-53 World Champion New York Yankees - Hardcover

Dom Forker

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0878336508 ISBN 13: 9780878336500

Publisher: UNKNO, 1989

Synopsis

Recalls the record-breaking New York Yankees, the only team in baseball history to win five consecutive World Series, offering the remembrances of the greatest Bronx Bombers

About this title

Review

In the tradition of Roger Kahn, who waxed eloquent about the loveable "Bums" of Ebbets Field, baseball writers (like all baseball fans) maintain an endless, unshakeable love affair with losers. Kalm's Boys of Summer is only the prototype for a flood tide of books on diamond heroes who always lost the big game and always evoked the plaintive cry of "wait till next season!" Veteran sports historian Dom Forker thus sets himself a difficult task of arresting our attention with accounts of baseball's most victorious (and consequently its least-loved) teams. Forker's book chronicles the events surrounding the 19491953 New York Yankees and is in many ways the antithesis of Kahn's classic study of the rival 1950s-era Brooklyn Dodgers. On the surface the format is similar-interviews with twenty-three alumni of that Yankee juggernaut which remains the only team in the century-long history of the sport to capture five consecutive World Series. Forker's title echoes Kalm's as wellThe Men ofAutumn---although the point here is that Kalm's melancholy appeal to disappointing summertime dreams of childhood baseball reflects a more tragic tone missing from Forker's less editorial treatment. These Yankees were, after all, supreme winners who always emerged victorious in the money-seasons of late September and early October. For these Yankees, it was always this year's celebrations and never next year's vain hopes. Forker's lively interview transcriptions do much to capture the winning attitude and supreme confidence of players like Rizzuto, Bauer, Woodling, Mize, Irv Noren, Joe Collins, and Billy Martin who formed the heart of Casey Stengel's unstoppable teams of the Mantle-Berra-Ford era. Ultimately, however, Forker's book is far different from Kahn's in all the most obvious ways. Attention here is focused narrowly on the baseball events of the 1950s rather than on the lifelong struggles which cursed Kahn's Dodgers. While Kalm's book eventually dissovles into the selfindulgent autobiography of its author, Forker's personal involvement with the Yankees is appropriately muted and skillfully concealed. Baseball is the sole focus here, and memories of those marvelous Yankee teams during baseball's greatest decade come to life in the reminiscences of some of the least remembered Yankees of the era: Ed Lopat, Charlie Silvera, Tommy Byrne, Gil McDougald. For those who grew up with baseball in the 1950s-hating the Yankees with vitriol or loving them with boundless passion-Forker's work is a baseball fantasy matched by few other baseball books. There are small flaws: The two greatest players on this team - DiMaggio and Mantle-fail to appear and were apparently unwilling to participate. Brief introductions to each carefully edited interview often merely repeat more lively players' commentaries to follow. But Forker and his collaborators do transport us once again back to the diamond-summer afternoons in the Yankee Stadium of our childhood--and what more could we ask of this or any baseball book? -- From Independent Publisher

About this edition

• Publisher: UNKNO
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0878336508
• ISBN 13: 9780878336500
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 228