| October 1964 |  | Author: David Halberstam
Publisher: Random House Value Publishing
Category: Book
Buy Used: $95.00
as of 8/1/2010 01:47 CDT details
Used (2) from $95.00
Rating:  65 reviews
Sales Rank: 7395180
Media: Hardcover
ISBN: 051717166X
Dewey Decimal Number: 796
EAN: 9780517171660
ASIN: 051717166X
Publication Date: October 21, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Heroes have a habit of growing larger over time, as do the arenas in which they excelled. The 1964 World Series between the Yankees and Cardinals was coated in myth from the get-go. The Yankees represented the establishment: white, powerful, and seemingly invincible. The victorious Cards, on the other hand, were baseball's rebellious future: angry and defiant, black, and challenging. Their seven-game barnburner, played out against a backdrop of an America emerging from the Kennedy assassination, escalating the war in Vietnam, and struggling with civil rights, marked a turning point--neither the nation, nor baseball, would ever be quite so innocent again. Halberstam, one of the great reporters of the '60s, looks back in this marvelous and spirited elegy to the era, the game, and players such as Mantle, Maris, Ford, Gibson, Brock, and Flood with a clear eye in search of the truth that time has blurred into legend. His confident prose, diligent reporting, and deft analysis make it clear how much more interesting--and forceful--the truth can be.
Product Description
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
THE BEST SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR
"October 1964 should be a hit with old-time baseball fans, who'll relish the opportunity to relive that year's to-die-for World Series, when the dynastic but aging New York Yankees squared off against the upstart St. Louis Cardinals. It should be a hit with younger students of the game, who'll eat up the vivid portrayals of legends like Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris of the Yankees and Bob Gibson and Lou Brock of the Cardinals. Most of all, however, David Halberstam's new book should be a hit with anyone interested in understanding the important interplay between sports and society."
--The Boston Globe
"Compelling...1964 is a chronicle of the end of a great dynasty and of a game, like the country, on the cusp of enormous change."
--Newsweek
"Halberstam's latest gives us the feeling of actually being there--in another time, in the locker rooms and in the minds of baseball legends. His time and effort researching the book result in a fluency with his topic and a fluidity of writing that make the reading almost effortless....Absorbing."
--San Francisco Chronicle
"Wonderful...Memorable...Halberstam describes the final game of the 1964 series accurately and so dramatically, I almost thought I had forgotten the ending."
--The Washington Post Book World
"Superb reporting...Incisive analysis...You know from the start that Halberstam is going to focus on a large human canvas...One of the many joys of this book is the humanity with which Halberstam explores the characters as well as the talents of the players, coaches and managers. These are not demigods of summer but flawed, believable human beings who on occasion can rise to peaks of heroism."
--Chicago Sun-Times
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 65
 Change Was In The Cards May 24, 2010
Bill Slocum (Norwalk, CT USA)
David Halberstam's "October 1964" is either a book about race told through the prism of baseball, or a book about baseball told through the prism of race. I can't decide, but either way, it works.
1964 was a big transitional year in baseball, as it was in pop music and American politics. The stolidly white New York Yankees had long been dominant and in at least some corridors of power the perception remained, even after the 1955 Dodgers, that black players couldn't beat white players in the clutch. Enter Lou Brock, Bill White, Curt Flood, and especially Bob Gibson, core members of the 1964 St. Louis Cardinals team.
The Yankees did some integrating, too, but at a slower pace. Vic Power idled away the best years of his career dominating the Yankee farm system, his bosses "waiting to see if he could turn white" he would later say. To achieve greatness in the 1960s and thereafter, one had to change. The Cardinals did, Halberstam writes, and so the decade would become theirs.
If this was Ken Burns' "Baseball", the documentary which came out the same year as this - 1994 - and was part of the same highbrow drive to intellectualize the game, the racial lessons would come in the form of a dripping trowel. But Halberstam makes his points deftly, keeping his focus on Bob Gibson as tough-nosed competitor rather than equality pioneer. A lot of the focus is on baseball here, amazingly enough, and Halberstam has a lot of interesting things to say, not just about blacks and whites but the kids in the clubhouse and the reporters in the press box, about Cardinal owner Gussie Busch and his alcohol-happy posse making franchise-altering decisions on the fly.
The Yankees get some attention, too, though not as much. Halberstam didn't talk to their manager in 1964, Yogi Berra, for reasons he doesn't explain, nor to shortstop Tony Kubek, one of the Yankees' most garrulous players (Kubek still wouldn't discuss what he considered too painful a season 30 years later). The Yankees made it to the post-season that year on sheer guts, with an outfield so badly bruised that when they walked off the field one day, star centerfielder Mickey Mantle joked: "All we need now is a flag and a drum."
Halberstam's book is occasionally repetitive in ways that suggest he didn't notice it, and he short-changes the World Series itself with two-to-three page summaries for each game. I don't think the book needed to be longer, but it could have done without the dragged-out epilogue.
The chapters themselves leading up to the World Series are masterful snapshots that focus on individual players in such a way you feel like you know all you need to about them by the time they get to the Series. Meanwhile, the subject of blacks and whites interacting in a troubled, often deadly time is never far from the surface, giving this book a social perspective that extends beyond the game. Yet the game remains from first to last the subject at hand. A baseball book for baseball people, I guess.
 Totally pleased. January 27, 2010
Mark Weston (New York)
The book was even more than I expected. So many wonderful memores returned after all these years.
 Disjointed, Superficial, and Sloppy October 22, 2009
Brian Brockmeyer (New York)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As a serious baseball fan, I came to this book with high expectations but was left thoroughly disappointed. Many of the same flaws that were present in Halberstam's earlier Summer of '49 (P.S.) are on full display here: a misleading title (the actual World Series accounts for no more than 30 or so pages), superficial analysis, lazy factual errors (e.g., Ralph Terry could not have met Cy Young as a rookie, as Young died the year before), sloppy editing, and a disjointed narrative plagued by constant rambling digressions. As others critical of this book have pointed out, amazingly more time is spent discussing tangential figures like Buck O'Neil and Tom Greenwade than on the Phillies' historic collapse, the Yankees' and Cardinals' second-half turnarounds, or any single game of the epic seven-game World Series. As a result, the '64 regular season and World Series--the ostensible subjects of the work--recede far, far into the background and become almost an afterthought. Though OCTOBER 1964 offers the occasional interesting anecdote, those few flashes of insight are not enough to save a book that lacks a central story and reads instead like a loose, tedious, and factually-suspect collection of two-dimensional vignettes.
As a final note, one should be advised that the book also lacks an index, seriously diminishing its reference value.
 Good but not great September 30, 2009
J. Franz (Oakland Ca)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I gave this three stars cause I did get a lot out of the book Yet not what I expected. As One reviewer here said Why did Mr. Halberstam spend time on Buck O'Neil's history.
I will go one further Why did he spend nearly as much time on Buck O'Neil as he did on the Philadelphia Phillies collapse That's a bigger part of the story of October 64
That's actually the story I thought I would be reading Cause without it, You don't have the Cardenals in the serise at all.
Yet its not all bad Some of the things covered that I did find interesting was the coming of age of Television, And the fall of the Yankees How it happened and what the 60's and College did to the modern Athlete College gave them other choices instead of Baseball so the bonus baby was born
So there was things to get out of this book but the story of October 1964 You have to wade through 300 pages before he gets to September and the series.
A Turning Point in Baseball & American History August 16, 2009
Larry Underwood (Scottsdale, AZ)
David Halberstam's masterpiece depicts a remarkable scenario for baseball & American society as well; the Yankees' dynasty was beginning a twelve year hiatus & the upstart Cardinals were coming into their own, bringing with them a style of play that would be emulated by the rest of the National League for another 20 some odd years; manifested by its domination in All-Star play over that time frame. Remember those days?
American society was undergoing a period of turbulence; the Civil Rights Movement was heating up, Vietnam was becoming a National tragedy & The Beatles were holding everyone's hand. At least we had that going for us.
Players like Bob Gibson & Lou Brock would go on to re-write World Series record books and were destined for the Hall of Fame. They formed the nucleus for their own mini-dynasty, going to the Series in '67 & '68 with a bunch of players who really seemed to love each other. Racial tension was replaced with free-spirited comaraderie and they played an exceptional brand of baseball. Ironically, helping the Cardinals to the success in '67 & '68 was the great former Yankeee, Roger Maris, who retired after the '68 season with a Busch Beer distributorship to call his own.
Halberstam brilliantly captures the essence of baseball at the crossroads, and a country trying to cope with tumultuous change. We somehow survived the '60s in spite of ourselves & baseball is no longer concerned about embracing diversity; instead they're dealing with a scandlous performance enhancing drug issue that is shaking the game to its core. Whether baseball can recover any time soon is open to conjecture.
The late David Halberstam would've had a field day writing about these antics in 2009.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 65
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