October 1964 - Tapa dura

In 1989 David Halberstam published Summer of '49, which became a number one New York Times bestseller. It was a compelling portrait of baseball in an America as yet unchanged by affluence, technology, and social progress. The players, almost all white, had been raised in harsh circumstances, the games were played in the afternoon on grass and were broadcast on radio, the teams traveled by train, and the owners had dictatorial power over the players. Here also was the story of the Yankees winning the first of their pennants under Casey Stengel before going on to become baseball's greatest dynasty.
October 1964 is Halberstam's exciting new book about baseball - this time about the last season of that Yankee dynasty. Like the previous book, it is both sports and history, and it is a fascinating account of an electrifying baseball championship against the background of profound social change. The Yankees, like most American League teams, reflected the status quo and, in contrast to the National League teams, had been slow to sign the new great black players (indeed, for a time, their best scouts were ordered not to sign them). Though the Yankees boasted such great names as Mantle, Maris, and Ford, theirs was an aging team: Mantle, hobbled by injuries, was facing his last hurrah in post-season play. By contrast, the St. Louis Cardinals were a young tough team on the ascent, featuring talented black players - Bob Gibson, Curt Flood, Lou Brock, and Bill White - who were changing the very nature of the game with their unprecedented speed and power.
Halberstam has once again given us an absorbing tale of an exciting season and a great Word Series that reflected a changing era in both baseball and the rest of society as well: The fabric that insulated baseball from the turmoil in the rest of the country was beginning to tear. We get intimate vignettes not only of the players but also of the scouts who signed them (including the black scouts who had been denied the chance to play in the major leagues themselves), and of the new and more irreverent members of the media, known as the Chipmunks, and their conflicts with the players. A book of keen insight and significance, October 1964 is also, like Halberstam's previous work, a great read.

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