We Played the Game: 65 Players Remember Baseball's Greatest Era, 1947-1964

by Danny Peary

Book Overview

A compilation of firsthand reminiscences, by such legendary players as Roger Maris, Jackie Robinson, Yogi Berra, and Mickey Mantle, sheds new light on one of baseballs most important and distinguished eras.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786860081
• ISBN13: 9780786860081
• Release Date: April 1994
• Publisher: Hyperion Books
• Length: 643 Pages
• Weight: 3.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.1" x 8.4" x 10.3"

Customer Reviews

The Best !!!

I have spent a lifetime reading about baseball and this tops my list.It covers both leagues and gives a rare insight into the stars and the non-stars and how they played and lived.It makes you feel as though you lived through it as well !!!

ALOT OF BANG FOR YOUR BUCK

THIS IS A BOOK COVERING BASEBALL FROM 1947 THRU 1964. THE AUTHOR HAS A FEW PLAYERS FROM EACH TEAM TELL IN THEIR OWN WORDS WHAT WAS GOING ON DURING THIS SEASON. SOME OF THE PEOPLE INTERVIEWED INCLUDE BROOKS ROBINSON, HARMON KILLEBREW, JIM GRANT, RYNE DUREN AND MANY OTHERS. THE BOOK HAS OVER 600 PAGES OF CONTENTS. FOR THE MONEY THIS IS GREAT BUY. THE DETAILED INTERVIEWS ARE SOMETHING SPECIAL AND I RECOMMEND THIS FOR FANS WHO FOLLOWED THE GAME IN THE 1950'S AND 60'S. AN OUTSTANDING READ.

If you grew up in the 50's and followed baseball closely....

.... then you will love this book. It's an oral history of the game as told by the non-superstars. Unlike similar books, this one is huge, and the stories are long, fun and will make you nostalgic for your youth. You'll see stories by guys like Ed Bouchee, Billy DeWitt, Don Mossi.... names you'll recognize from the days when baseball cards cost a nickel a pack, provided you with a thin slice of bubble gum, and a bunch of cards to trade with your friends or stick in the spokes of your bike wheels.I'm only part way through and I love this book!

And They Played It Well

Reviewer Brislen has done a fine job of highlighting the virtues of this baseball compendium, and I recommend that readers read his review first. I have only a few points to add. Because the number of contributers is limited (65) and unevenly spread across the 17 year period, some teams and years are better represented than others. So readers wishing to follow the course of a single team or concentrate on a particular focal year may be disappointed. As to the negative side of the game--when they occur, the dislikes, criticisms, or revelations by the players are usually aimed at management, not at each other. Thus, for better or worse, those readers looking for a gossipy Ball Four writ-large may also be disappointed. Among players, there are two other recurring topics in addition to salary concerns : (1) drinking, some teams and players (usually unspecified) had a history generally unmentioned on the sports pages, and (2) race relations, the narrative presents an inside look at another subject generally untouched by sports columns of the time.The year 1964 may mark the end of the great Yankee teams and the end of the Golden Age as recounted in the book, but its political context is also relevant. It's one year after the Kennedy assassination and one year before the great Vietnam build-up, two epochal events that have come to define an end to our national innocence. They also usher in a generational change marked by a greater willingness to challenge authority and the rules. In baseball, this rebellious spirit leads to an overturning of the restrictive reserve clause that tied players to a single team, and more subtlely, to an undermining of the working class ethic that so many fans found endearing. The pluses and minuses of these two key elements comprise something of an underlying theme that weaves in and out of the narratives, and lends the book broader historical significance.Still and all, what lifts this work above so many others is the opportunity editor Peary provides to so many marginal and obscure players to tell their story, ones which really do constitute the fabric of the game, and how basically decent and attached to baseball these men are. Coming away from their stories, the reader begins to understand why this game alone, with its very unfashionable appearance and rhythms, has worked its way into the soul of a nation.

A Truly Great History!

Danny Peary has compiled an oral history that is simply as good an effort as has been done to date. The sixty-five players interviewed range from a few stars like Brooks Robinson, Del Ennis, Lew Burdette and Don Newcombe to solid career players such as Hank Sauer, Andy Seminick, Eddie Joost and Gene Woodling to guys just trying to hang on like Coot Veal, Ed Bouchee, Al Kozar and Bob Cain. The book covers the years 1947-1964 which many, including Peary have labeled the "golden era" of baseball. Most of the seminal changes of postwar baseball have been covered before of course in other works, but seldom in the words of the players themselves. At least not in the words of non-superstars. As you read the stories of these players you begin to realize the pressures they were all under in a time before free agency, long term contracts and huge endorsement money. Almost all of these guys, even the best, needed to have winter jobs to make ends meet. To understand the politics that could deny talented players opportunity in age of the reserve clause, read and reread the story of Al Kozar. In spite of the obvious disparity between today and then, one gets the feeling that ballplayers in that era seemed to enjoy the game more than their current counterparts. For all the inherent problems with the reserve clause, there seemed to be an innocence to the game that no longer exists. Any serious historian of baseball should not be without this book.