Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} October 1964 by David Halberstam October 1964 ( 1994 ) David Halberstam is undoubtedly one of the great journalists of the past few decades. As the New York Times correspondent in Vietnam in the early 60's, he was one of the most influential media voices on the War and The Best and the Brightest was one of the first really important books on what had gone wrong. The success of the book freed him from the grind of daily newspaper work, but in the succeeding years he has produced books on The Times, the auto industry and various sports, almost all of which are characterized by reportage of the highest quality. I particularly liked The Reckoning , wherein he recounts the fall of the American and the rise of the Japanese auto industries and Breaks of the Game , in which he details one year in the life of the Portland Trail Blazers and which I maintain is the only good basketball book ever written. And, of course, he wrote the terrific Summer of '49 , about the rivalry between the Red Sox of Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio's Yankees. In October 1964 he returns to baseball, this time to the World Series showdown between the Yankees and the Cardinals, and combines the detailed reporting for which he is known, with a theme similar to that of The Reckoning . For what truly interests him about that year, a seemingly ordinary enough season in most respects, is the aspect of race and how the different teams dealt with it. He explores the manner in which the Cardinals, through their commitment to finding and developing black players, were leading a revolution in the game of baseball, building their team around superior speed and athleticism and the burning desire to succeed. He contrasts them with the Yankees, an increasingly fossilized institution, refusing to use black players, attempting to quash free spirits and unable to replace declining stars like Mantle and Ford. Now if, like me, you grew up listening to Bill White and Phil Rizzuto and Tim McCarver broadcast baseball games, many of the stories in here will be familiar. In fact, I became conscious for perhaps the first time of the difference between a great reporter and great writer as I was reading this book. I really noticed that large swaths of the book are simple regurgitation of interviews and the judgments about the game that are being related are not even his own, they are the interviewees. If Mel Stottlemyre told him that the key to pitching was throwing breaking balls and keeping the ball down, then that's Halberstam's belief. I don't know whether he actually doesn't know all that much about the game or simply chose to believe the professionals, but I found a lot of the opinion that he offers to be unconsidered. His editorial voice wafts very faintly through the book, emerging only on the racial and labor issues (Curt Flood of the Cardinals would be the first man to challenge baseball's restrictive contracts, paving the way for free agency). Much of the rest reads like a reporter conveying the players' impressions after a game. There are also some really annoying repetitions in the book, redundancies which any editor should have caught, assuming editors still exist. But on balance I liked the book. His essential "changing of the guard" premise is absolutely correct. Black players completely dominated the 60's and 70's, not merely for athletic reasons but also because they were simply hungrier and had more to gain (for much the same reason, Irish then Jews and Italians enjoyed their hey day earlier in the century and Latin American players are in the ascendancy now). The more aggressive signing of black talent also led to a long period of dominance by the National League after years of Yankee invincibility. This racial theme gives the book a greater social resonance than most sports fare which, combined with the baseball lore, would seem to make the book an ideal vehicle to teach young adults about the civil rights struggles in a format they'd find interesting and entertaining. What I’m Reading: “October 1964” by David Halberstam. With October 1964 , David Halberstam put his considerable skills to good use in telling the story of the 1964 baseball season and the seven-game World Series between the Cardinals and Yankees. Halberstam, who unfortunately passed away in 2007, won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1964 and earned his fame for his reporting on the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, politics, and culture. Later in his career, he also wrote a number of books about basketball, baseball, and football, including Summer of ’49 , about the pennant race between the Yankees and Red Sox, and The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship about the relationships between several of the 1940s Red Sox. Halberstam’s attention to detail and comprehensive reporting mean that his books go beyond the field. As a result, October 1964 really fleshes out the personalities of the Cardinals’ Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Tim McCarver, Bill White, Ken Boyer, Curt Flood, Mike Shannon, Curt Simmons, Ray Sadecki, and Johnny Keane, and the Yankees’ Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Whitey Ford, Jim Bouton, Mel Stottlemyre, Tony Kubek, Joe Pepitone, Elston Howard, and Bobby Richardson. Inevitably, the book discusses race relations and compares the Yankees, for whom Howard was their first Black player, and the Cardinals, who clubhouse culture was ahead of the times. The heart of that Cardinals team included a number of Black players, including Gibson, Brock, White, and Flood, and Halberstam details the struggles they faced and the ways in which they had to work harder and play better than their white counterparts. That determination led those players to great heights in 1964, and Halberstam does a great job of illustrating the players’ personalities as he describes the course of the season. There are a number of terrific stories in the book, some of which took place in 1964 and others that are used to illustrate the personalities of those in and around the games. One of my favorite stories was about Gussie Busch’s attempt to buy Ernie Banks from the Cubs. Busch authorized the Cardinals’ general manager, Frank Lane, to buy Banks for as much as $500,000 and was stunned when Lane came back empty-handed. When he asked why, Lane explained, “Mr. Busch, I was politely reminded that Mr. Wrigley needs half a million just about as much as you do.” In another funny story, when Brock was traded from the Cubs to the Cardinals, Banks told him he could still get to the World Series – he would be happy to send Brock a ticket when the Cubs were playing. Instead, after the Cardinals won the title that year, Brock sent Banks the box his World Series ring came in. Those small stories really brought the teams and the players to life. Through in-depth research and reporting, Halberstam placed the 1964 baseball season in a broader historical context and helped me understand not only that season, but the world these players lived in. It was a joy to read and a great example of sports journalism with a real sense of history. David Halberstam's October 1964 Review. Following the success of his first baseball effort, Summer of '49, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam has returned once again to the national pastime. However, unlike his earlier work, Halberstam's newest book— October 1964 —can be understood on many different levels. First, and foremost, October 1964 is a baseball story. It is an easily read, journalistic account of the players, managers, and owners of the New York Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals as the two clubs prepared to meet in the 1964 World Series. More importantly, October 1964 is an historical account of the decline of the Yankee dynasty which had ruled baseball for decades. In its stead was evolving an era where black ballplayers were becoming an increasingly important part of major league baseball. Two players dominate a story of such scope: the Yankees' Mickey Mantle and St. Louis' Bob Gibson. The demise of Mantle's career due to injuries, and perhaps also to his lifestyle, symbolized the deterioration of the Bronx Bombers. At the same time, the drive, determination and anger, which pushed Bob Gibson to excel, epitomized the stresses and strains of being black in a sport where many still preferred only white players. The End Of The Mystique Ever since they had ascended to the top of the baseball world in the 1920s, it had been the belief of Yankees management, and others as well; that every player wanted to be a Yankee. Beyond just the 'mystique' of the pinstripes, the Yankees regularly appeared in the World Series. Therefore, a player could always count on a World Series bonus cheque to augment his regular salary. You did not have to be a starting player to reap these benefits. Charlie Silvera, a reserve catcher with the Yankees, cashed seven World Series cheques, totalling $46,337.45 even though he only played in one post-season game. "Silvera would come to refer to the lovely house he bought in suburban San Francisco as 'the house that Yogi built,' after the Yankee catcher whom he had played behind all those years." Unfortunately for the Yankees' players, management also considered World Series cheques to be part of the players' total compensation, and took great pains to keep regular season salaries low. Since the team had so many good players, they were not dependent upon any one person, other than perhaps Mantle. As a result, if a pitcher was nearing 20 wins the Yankees would deliberately try to stop him from winning games so they would not have to increase his salary to reflect that the player was a 20-game winner. Halberstam notes that even Hall of Famer "Whitey" Ford waited ten years before he finally was "allowed" to win 20 games. Such hubris was the Yankees' downfall. No longer could a Yankee scout sign a prospect for less than what opposition teams offered by appealing to the 'mystique' of the pinstripes. The advent of television, and the increased radio coverage of baseball in the 1950s and '60s, meant more advertising dollars and thus greater revenues for each team. Clubs, eager to compete with the Yankees, could now offer huge signing bonuses to prospective players. Missing The Boat The Yankees during this era also came to the misguided conclusion that they neither needed, nor wanted black players to help their club remain competitive. General Manager George Weiss was afraid that black players would attract black fans, thus offending the Yankees' traditional middle-class white customers. Halberstam, in October 1964, relates a conversation between Weiss and scout Tom Greenwade, who had scouted Jackie Robinson for the Dodgers and would later sign Mickey Mantle for the Yankees: "Greenwade knew as much or more about the available black talent as any white scout in the country, but Weiss as not interested. Now Tom, 'he told Greenwade in their first meeting working together, 'I don't want you sneaking around down any back alleys and signing any niggers. We don't want them.' That was that. Greenwade thought it bizarre. He was being tipped on such great young prospects as Ernie Banks, but was unable to move on them because of his marching orders. The Yankees, he later lamented to his son Bunch, lost an important decade by not going after black talent. " Weiss failed to realize that the toughness the Yankees sought in their prospects could be found in black ballplayers; players who craved to play in the majors just as much as pinstripers Mantle, Kubek, Henrich and others had in the past. For evidence of the determination of black major leaguers, according to Halberstam, one need look no further than the career of the Cardinals' Bob Gibson. "It was as if winning merely confirmed Gibson's role as a famous, admired, and well-paid professional athlete. Losing on the other hand threatened to reduce him to what he had once been, a poor, sickly black kid from the Omaha ghetto, always on the outside looking in." At first, the St. Louis Cardinals were hesitant about signing black players. August Busch, president of Anheuser-Busch and the owner of the Cardinals, was first and foremost a businessman. He had purchased the Cardinals to keep Milwaukee beer companies from buying the team and moving it to Wisconsin. Busch recognized that, in the modern age of television and media advertising, owning a major league baseball team could be financially beneficial to his brewing company. Likewise, he realized that black Americans drank his beer and if he had black players on the Cardinals it could increase his beer sales to black consumers. All For One. Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Cardinals signed black players like Bill White (later the President of the National League), Curt Flood and Bob Gibson. Halberstam's October 1964 describes in great detail the hardships faced by black players, both in the minor and major leagues, and the impact it had on them: "What was especially hard about it, the black players believed, was that those who were supposed to be on your side—your teammates, and your manager—rarely were; the organization that was supposed to be behind them did not appreciate the ordeal they were experiencing. Baseball's executives had clearly decided that they needed black ballplayers in the game, that the talent was too great to ignore. But, the young blacks of that generation wondered, did they really belong? Were they really wanted? Or were they to come, make their contribution, and then be gone as quickly as possible when the game was over? They experienced a spiritual loneliness, a sense of being apart from those who were supposed to be teammates, and of doubting the loyalty of the men for whom they played." Nevertheless, by 1964, the Cardinals—both black and white—had come together as a team. Halberstam notes the close relationships that formed between the black players and the white players (in particular Tim McCarver and Ken Boyer). The Cardinals were a team that learned to stick together, especially in the face of the tirades and manipulations of their new general manager, Branch Rickey. WhiIe the Yankees—due to managerial mishandling, injuries and old age—were on the decline, the Cardinals were just developing into a cohesive unit. Labour negotiator Marvin Miller, while visiting various teams, quickly perceived a distinct atmosphere in the St. Louis clubhouse. "The players were more relaxed, more mature, and better integrated, black and white. The friendships among the players seemed to transcend racial lines, and Miller was especially struck by the fact that not only were the players friendly with each other, but their families were too." The Importance Of An Era Halberstam devotes much of October 1964 to the events, players, and owners that influenced the evolution of major league baseball during this time. Relying heavily on information gathered from the scouts and players involved, he emphasizes the impact that the increasing number of black players had on both the black and white baseball communities. This background—at once both sports history and socio-economic analysis— provides the reader with a thorough understanding of why the events both during the 1964 World Series and afterwards occurred as they did. David Halberstam's October 1964 is an entertaining and informative look at an era of dynamic change in baseball history. The struggles of early black players like Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, and Curt Flood are well documented. 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Every year I try to read a baseball book to get ready for spring training and the new season. This year, I chose October 1964 , David Halberstam's look back at one of the most exciting and compelling World Series matchups of the modern era on the 30th anniversary of its occurrence (that's 1994, for those of you like me who prefer words to math). The opening chapter profiles the state of the New York Yankees as the '64 season unfolded; the second chapter did the same for the St. Louis Cardinals. From this, even those readers who don't have the entire list of World Series winners memorized can figure out who is still going to be playing at the end. The book continues to alternate every few chapters between the two teams, so that by the time the Series starts the reader is as intimately acquainted with the history and personnel of these two franchises as any baseball fan of the era. You might wonder how a seven-game World Series can take 475 pages to describe (the first game of the Series itself begins on Page 401). That's the genius of Halberstam: Before he gets down to recounting the twists and turns of the championship, he deftly builds up the reader's knowledge of everything essential that came before. Of course there are profiles of key players on each team, but he also weaves in the history of each franchise, the history of baseball itself, and the social climate in which the season and Series were played. One of the things that makes 1964 such a great season to read now is that it was the cusp of what became the modern era of baseball. Free agency had not yet been implemented (in fact, the player who would be most responsible for forcing the owners' hands on that matter was Curt Flood, who was playing for the Cardinals in 1964), but player salaries had begun to rise (modestly; we're talking about five-digit annual salaries, not the eight-digit salaries of today), and more tellingly, young players were no longer so easily controlled in any way except who they played for. Old-school managers and front-office personnel who began working in baseball during the old military-style, my-way-or-the-highway, all-white era were baffled at young players who chafed at too many rules and thought there was more to life than a game. (They also held ambivalent and racist attitudes about the black players they reluctantly signed, even 17 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.) It seems every generation must have its "kids today!" moment. My friend Beth told me she loved October 1964 even though she doesn't like baseball, and after reading it I can understand why. Yes, it's nominally about baseball, but it's also about the way American life and society changed in the 1960s in ways both incremental and radical. (In that sense, it's a perfect companion to Halberstam's [The Children], about the Civil Rights Movement.) And it's written by a man who was a master at presenting a complex subject clearly and who always let the personalities of the era take center stage. ( ) OCTOBER 1964. The riveting story of how two very different baseball teams, reflective of the times in America, got to the 1964 World Series. Pulitzer Prize— winning journalist Halberstam (The Fifties, 1993, etc.) looks at America's baseball diamonds in this volume, a bookend to his earlier Summer of '49 (1989). Halberstam's premise is that vast changes had occurred in American society in the 15 years that divided those two baseball seasons, and the teams that played in the 1964 World Series, the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees, reflected opposing currents in a deeply conflicted American society. For the Yankees, it was the last hurrah of their near-total baseball dominance that began in 1949; Halberstam contends that they were emblematic of the era coming to an end. With fading superstars such as Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Whitey Ford, the Yankees stood for the established order, both symbolically, in the minds of baseball fans, and in reality, in their dependence on power over speed and in management's reluctance to sign black players. The Cardinals, by contrast, were one of the best-integrated teams in baseball. They depended on strategy and speed, and highly intelligent stars like Bob Gibson, Louis Brock, Tim McCarver, and Curt Flood represented a new breed of ballplayer. Halberstam weaves the life stories of dozens of players, managers, coaches, scouts, and team owners into this deceptively simple but extremely revealing chronicle. If Halberstam is to be faulted, it is in his underlying assumption that pure love of baseball transcends all evils: apart from a few crusty and anachronistic old managers, none of the villains in this book get any closer to the playing field than the owner's or the press box. A powerful and entertaining examination of the forces transforming baseball, and the country, in a pivotal period in the history of America and its national pastime. Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994. ISBN: 0449983676. Page Count: 320. Publisher: Villard. Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010. Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994. Share your opinion of this book. Did you like this book? More by David Halberstam. An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water. WHY WE SWIM. by Bonnie Tsui ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020. A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being. For Bay Area writer Tsui ( American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods , 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).