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Title: The Last Good Season: Brooklyn, the Dodgers, and Their Final Pennant Race Together by MICHAEL SHAPIRO ISBN: 0-385-50152-8 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 18 March, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.92 (12 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A balanced and wonderful history of the Bums and the end...
Comment: The Dodgers of Brooklyn are now mythic. After one reads a wonderful book like Boys of Summer and hears stories about the Bums, you can't help but believe it. However, the Last Good Season brings some balance to the stories and memories. He honors the men who played a boys game in a decaying old stadium. He does not villify O'Malley, but does Robert Moses who was not a great force for good. The book is not a pure baseball book, but as a self-styled historian (using the term very loosely), I enjoyed the views of the Brooklyn and the large social change. Shapiro does not make the Dodgers more than they are. If anything, he is understated in his discussions of the power of baseball. It works beautifully. The book is engrossing and by the end, you can't help but the love Dodgers more. Once you have read this (and you must read Boys of Summer first) go read The Sandy Koufax book, A Lefty's Legacy which really is a nice a bookend to the Dodgers glory years of the 1950s and 1960s (to say nothing of the '70s and '80s).
Rating: 5
Summary: The Boys of Summer in Their Autumn
Comment: Books relating to specific years have been popular over the past several years with mixed results. Author Michael Shapiro has provided us with an outstanding portrait of an aging Brooklyn Dodgers' team going down to the wire in the 1956 season to eek out a pennant over the Milwaukee Braves during the final days of the season. The book is really two separate stories. One involving a lot of politics between Dodgers' owner Walter O'Malley and Robert Moses, an appointed New York official, over the location of a new playing site for the Dodgers. Moses wanted a site located on the present site of Shea Stadium while O'Malley wanted one nearer to Ebbets Field. Shapiro labels Moses as the villain in the move of the Dodgers while O'Malley needed help in acquiring a new stadium, but was not going to get it. Los Angeles promised him more than New York would even consider, so Walter made the move. The one thing O'Malley and Moses shared in common, according to Shapiro, was an ignorance between the team and its fans. Sometimes I felt overwhelmed with the politics involved between both sides in trying to get the deal each wanted, but Shapiro is very thorough in his research. The book's chapters are divided into each month of the baseball season and what took place during each month. A separate chapter is provided for the last week of the season and the World Series. Interesting stories about players such as Robinson, Campanella, Erskine, Reese, Furillo, Newcombe, Labine, and an early season pickup of Sal "The Barber" Maglie from the Cleveland Indians make for very interesting reading even if you are familiar with the Dodgers of this era from other books. It is ironic that former Giant and Dodger rival, Sal "The Barber" Maglie, was to be very instrumental in bringing the Dodgers home with the 1956 pennant. Interesting details of the deal that sent Maglie to the Dodgers from the Indians are provided. Maglie also authored his only no-hitter during the final week of the '56 season, before being victimized by Don Larsen's perfect game in the 5th game of the Series. For the most part America wanted the Milwaukee Braves to win the '56 pennant just to have a new team in the Series, but the St. Louis Cardinals snuffed out the Braves' hopes in St. Louis while the Dodgers were beating the Pirates in Brooklyn. If you feel you have read enough of the Brooklyn Dodgers in previous books, you owe it to yourself to read about this storied team during their Last Good Season.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Last Hurrah For A Legendary Team
Comment: The conventional story of the Brooklyn Dodgers' demise is largely familiar to most baseball fans by now. The Borough of Brooklyn saw the working-class white families who had supported the Dodgers flee en masse in the decade after World War Two, replaced by blacks, Puerto Ricans and others of different customs and values. Meanwhile, greedy Dodger owner Walter O'Malley, after making a pretense of wanting to stay in Brooklyn, quickly packed his bags for the more lucrative territory of Los Angeles. If this is the storyline you cling to, be prepared to re-think it. In "The Last Good Season," Michael Shapiro provides a thoroughly-researched, gracefully-written account of the Dodgers' final pennant race and the transformation of Brooklyn.
"I see the boys of summer in their ruin," Dylan Thomas had written in a poem that would forever become linked to the Dodgers. Roger Kahn's masterpiece was still in the future in 1956, but the great Dodger team that had dominated the National League for a decade was clearly approaching the end of the line. Age and injuries were taking their toll on men like Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Carl Erskine and Pee Wee Reese. Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax were on hand, but were still untested youngsters, not the dominant pitchers they would become on the west coast.
Shapiro interweaves an account of the 1956 season with the story of Brooklyn's transformation in the postwar years. Yes, many whites were fleeing to the suburbs, but Ebbets Field was still filled with fans. In fact, he suggests, it was a wonderful, if brief period when black, brown and white fans came together for a common purpose.
What seems abundantly clear from the archives Shapiro has mined is that far from looking for a quick exit, O'Malley was seeking every opportunity to stay (although on his terms.) All he wanted--reasonably enough, in his view--was the city's help in securing the site for a new stadium. Here, though, he came up against the most powerful man in New York--Robert Moses. It was a battle he was destined to lose. Interestingly enough, while Shapiro refuses to condemn O'Malley as a carpetbagger, he does conclude he never should have owned a baseball team. Why? He simply didn't understand the game, or its true meaning to its fans. O'Malley was the kind of owner who could maximize the bottom line, and knew how to successfully market his product--but that's all it ever was to him. A product. As Shapiro's book makes clear, for millions of fans, the Brooklyn Dodgers represented to much more.--William C. Hall
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Title: The Teammates by David Halberstam ISBN: 140130057X Publisher: Hyperion Press Pub. Date: 14 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: The Era 1947-1957: When the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers Ruled the World by Roger Kahn ISBN: 0803278055 Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr Pub. Date: March, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: The Brooklyn Dodgers: An Informal History by Frank Graham, Jack Lang ISBN: 080932413X Publisher: Southern Illinois Univ Pr (Trd) Pub. Date: March, 2002 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Sandy Koufax : A Lefty's Legacy by Jane Leavy ISBN: 0060933291 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 02 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: October Men: Reggie Jackson, George Steinbrenner, Billy Martin, and the Yankees' Miraculous Finish in 1978 by Roger Kahn ISBN: 0151006288 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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