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The
Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship by David Halberstam Rating: ••• (Recommended) |
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Friends Forever Baseball fans will love David Halberstam’s
new book, The
Teammates. Those readers who pay no attention to baseball will find The
Teammates to present that amazing phenomenon called friendship in a way
that resonates with the range of human nature most of us experience. Halberstam
describes how Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, Bobby Doerr and Dominic DiMaggio met, how they
worked together on a team, and how they spent their entire lives as friends. Here’s an excerpt from the end of the book (pp.
198-200): A
few months after Ted died, I found myself in Johnny Peskv's house in
Swamoscott, starting work on this book. When I had first called his home to
set up the meeting, Ruth Pesky
told me that he was already at the ballpark working. "He's eighty-two,”
she said. “He promised me he’d quit when he reaches eighty-five." It's
a lovely home. A painting by Leroy Neiman of Ted Williams and that marvelous
swing hangs in the living room, and the air is scented by Pesky’s
ever-present cigars. He and Ruth Hickev Peskv have lived in this house for 35
years, and they
built it to their specifications. It's a bit modern, with a good deal of
light coming in, and it has a warm feeling of being lived in. It took 22
years to pay off" the mortgage, which amuses Pesky because he coaches
now in an age when young ballplayers can pay off their mortgages in one year,
thanks to their awesome salaries. Some of the difference in attitude is, I suppose,
generational. Pesky, like the other three, grew up in an America of
dramatically lower expectations and came of age during the Depression. A
great deal less was assumed in terms of lifestyle. But no small part of it
was the nature of the man himself. He had always understood his limitations
and his strengths, both on and off the field, and thus the sum of his good
fortune. Besides, if his head had swelled even slightly, Ruth Pesky was
always there to bring him back down. His fame, he enjoyed pointing out,
mattered not at all to her. Pesky
was in no way disappointed with what had not taken place during the
rest of his life. Instead he seemed somewhat in awe of how long it had all
lasted, how rich his life had been, how many friends he had made, how many
people actually liked him, and how many people still remembered him and his
glory days, and were pleased to be in his company. It was never about money,
he said. The money was okay, less surely than it should have been because of
labor laws of the time. Still it was more than anything he might have made
doing another job—no one was beating a rush to their door to offer someone named
John Paveskovich a job. Johnny Pesky was another matter. Perhaps the alternative might have
been working for the sawmill like his father. But baseball had provided a wonderful, rich life.
The pleasure had always been in the doing, the sheer delight in going out
there every day and playing, being paid to do the thing you loved to do. And
the richness had come from the friendships, he said. How many people in other
professions have friendships that last so long—unusual friendships because
when you see each
other, you were instantly taken back to another time, when you were all young, and
some big game was on the line. If there was one thing that surprised Pesky, it was
how long it had all lasted—how much resonance there was to his fame, even
now, 60 years after he broke in. People still knew who he was and still cared
about him and his teammates. There was a special richness, he thought, to the
kind of life he had lived that went well beyond any material rewards. The
other three, I thought, all agreed. "My guys," Ted had called them,
and they were that, always very much their own men, but his guys as well,
forever linked to him as well as to each other. When Bobby Doerr and Dominic
DiMaggio talked about their lives, it was with the same tone as John, with an
appreciation—indeed a gratitude—for their good fortune, and a sense that
although they had prospered, the best part, the richest part, of their lives
had little to do with material things, and that they had lived their lives
with very few regrets. The
Teammates is s story about baseball, personalities, choices, friendship,
love and caring. Especially if today’s sports stars make you gag with their
super-egos, read about four men who dealt with those egos, with competition,
with love and loss, and come away feeling pretty good. Steve Hopkins, June 21, 2003 |
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ã 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the July 2003
issue of Executive
Times URL
for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Teammates.htm For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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