If you had to pick one year in a particular sport - in this case baseball - and argue that that year marked something special, Talmage Boston would argue that that year was 1939. To him, that year marked a sea change - a "tipping point" in baseball in many ways, from the departure of Lou Gehrig and the arrival of Ted Williams, to Joe DiMaggio's greatest season. But that season was significant for many other reasons behind the scenes, he argues, including milestones in the radio and television broadcast of games, the development of the ground rules that umpires still follow, and the beginnings of Little League.
One fact that makes 1939 easy to tag as a significant year in the history of the game is an obvious one - the opening of baseball's Hall of Fame at Cooperstown in what was supposedly the game's centennial year. But Boston goes to some lengths to explain how that came about, and the reasons why the Doubleday myth was born and adopted by baseball. In what were, being a history buff, my favorite chapters, he shows that while it is demonstrably true that Doubleday didn't invent the game (in fact, he never he heard of it) and the first game wasn't in Cooperstown, or even in 1839, Cooperstown is still an outstanding place to commemorate something, and baseball is lucky that it's baseball. Boston doesn't pull any punches in showing the fraud behind the legend of the games' origin, which is admirable coming from an author that obviously loves the game very much. In any event, the game was truly coming of age in 1939 as he posits, but it was obviously not there yet, as the chapter on the experience of black ballplayers in the Negro League shows. But the stage was slowly being set, and players who would go on to integrate the game in the next decade are already coming onto the scene in 1939.
Personally, I know virtually nothing about baseball beyond three years of Little League and watching Bull Durham and Field of Dreams. I bumped into Joe DiMaggio - literally - one afternoon on a sidewalk in Washington D.C. after Edward Bennett Williams' funeral in 1988, and it wasn't until ten minutes later that I finally realized who that tall, distinguished looking gentleman that looked so familiar was. I am ashamed to say that I connected his face with Marilyn Monroe and Mr. Coffee before I could come up with his name and realize he had done something in connection with baseball as well. (Okay, I'm not ashamed of the Marilyn Monroe part - just the Mr. Coffee one). I have a library of nearly 2,000 books, but this is the only one that has anything remotely to do with baseball. Frankly, the only reason I bought the book is because Talmage is a friend of mine and we are active in various State Bar of Texas activities, and I like having inscribed copies of books. But damned if it didn't turn out to be a good book - who knew Talmage could write? I had the whole thing read within two or three days of getting it because I just couldn't put it down. As I said, I know nothing about baseball, but this book turned out to be a great place to start (so would a Physician's Desk Reference, as it turns out, but that's a different story). Even starting with no real reference points, I could still follow what was happening and understand what was important, and why.
And I think that's for two reasons. First, and this is an important point, this is a very well written book. It's always a good practice to be suspicious of lawyers as authors, because we are - generally speaking - lousy writers. As Judge Jerome Frank once observed "lawyers are excused from the necessity of interesting their readers and -- let's face the evidence -- they take advantage of this enviable exemption." Opposing counsel and judges have to read what we write, no matter how badly we write it. That's one reason I was, frankly, astonished at how good this book is. This book tells the stories it selects very, very well. It is an admirable addition to the tremendous tradition our country has of outstanding sportswriting (which I am familiar with through football, so it's not like I'm totally unfamiliar with the genre here). No clunsy sentences, no overblown rhetoric - just good, concise writing, with an eye for the right detail. (Okay, I hate endnotes, but I recognize I'm in the minority here in actually enjoying footnotes, so I'll let that go).
The second reason I liked the book so well is because at its heart it really isn't telling stories about baseball. It is telling universal stories - stories of men struggling against the limitations of their ability, their age, their nature, or, most tragically in the case of Lou Gehrig, a debilitating disease, to compete in a game that meant everything to them. Boston really isn't that interested in who won or lost particular games - the point is who won or lost in the larger struggle they were engaged in, or, in the old phrase, how they played the game. The game is, at bottom, a mirror in which the character of the men who played it is reflected. And that's something that is always worth reading stories about. Especially if the stories are told this well.