DiMag & Mick: Sibling Rivals, Yankee Blood Brothers - Hardcover

Castro, Tony

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1630761249 ISBN 13: 9781630761240

Publisher: Lyons Press, 2016

Synopsis

In what Rolling Stone called "an epic The Natural meets The Rookie buddy drama," DiMag & Mick presents American pop cultural legends Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle together in 1951 as an aging, ailing Joltin' Joe prepares to leave the superstar stage of New York City while The Mick struggles stepping into the hero's cleats at Yankee Stadium -- so raise the curtain on Broadway! "A dream of a book..." -- Chicago Tribune

DiMag & Mick is the critically-acclaimed portrait of the two baseball stars by the author whose best-selling Mickey Mantle: American's Prodigal Son has been hailed by The New York Times as the definitive biography of the Yankee switch-hitting slugging icon. Historian Tony Castro, who is also the author of the landmark dual biography Gehrig & The Babe: The Friendship and The Feud, magnificently paints Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle in the pivotal setting of 1951: DiMaggio's farewell season and Mantle's rookie year. The book brings them alive as the old and young exemplars of what was a more confident, masterful age not only in baseball but in the country where they were held up as cultural heroes over two generations, symbolic of an America celebrating its recent triumph over Nazism and ever-curious about the new age of color television, rocket ships, and technology. 

DiMag & Mick is also the story of fathers and sons, rebels and heroes, and reveals the rite of passage of two men who would go down in baseball immortality - DiMaggio as he reluctantly prepares to leave the spotlight of adoration and hero-worship for glitzy world of Marilyn Monroe's exploding Hollywood celebrity, and Mantle in his awkward attempt to leave his country roots of Dust Bowl Oklahoma for the big city exposure and expectations of greatness being placed on him. Yankee legend and glory holds a special magic all its own, and Castro examines the heart and soul of that mystique, especially the bond of the players themselves and how that came to breed and spread the perception that there was any animosity between DiMaggio and Mantle - two polarizing personalities who drove many teammates away from one and galvanized their friendship with the other.

About this title

About the Author

Tony Castro, whom The New York Times has called the definitive biographer of Mickey Mantle, is a Harvard and Baylor-educated historian and author of seven books. Mantle: The Best There Ever Was is the finale of his Mickey Mantle Trilogy that includes Mickey Mantle: America's Prodigal Son (2002) and DiMag & Mick: Sibling Rivals, Yankee Blood Brothers (2016).

His other books include Gehrig & The Babe: The Friendship and the Feud (2018) and Hemingway: Spain, The Bullfights and A Final Rite of Passage (2016). He is currently working on a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Tony is also the author of the landmark civil rights history Chicano Power: The Emergence of Mexican America  (1974), which Publishers Weekly  acclaimed as "brilliant... a valuable contribution to the understanding of our time."

His poignant coming-of-age memoir The Prince of South Waco: American Dreams and Great Expectations (2013) was hailed by distinguished Texas editor and educator Tony Pederson for its "startling and frequently disturbing insights into growing up Hispanic and talented in Texas in the 1950s and 1960s. He lays bare the tortured and sometimes heartbreaking soul of his youth and life as a young adult."

As a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, Tony studied under Homeric scholar and translator Robert Fitzgerald, Mexican Nobel laureate Octavio Paz, and French history scholars Laurence Wylie and Stanley Hoffman.

Tony lives in Los Angeles with his wife Renee LaSalle and Jeter, their black Labrador retriever. Their two grown sons, Trey and Ryan, also reside in Southern California.

Edition details

• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1630761249
• ISBN 13: 9781630761240
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 296