The Only Game in Town: Baseball Stars of the 1930s and 1940s Talk About the Game They Loved

1 rating: 1.0

A book by Fay Vincent

This first entry in an ambitious, multivolume oral history of baseball compiled by former commissioner Vincent collects the memories of 10 notable players from the 1930s and '40s. The tone is primarily upbeat, as when Dominic DiMaggio—one of the … see full wiki

Tags: Books, Baseball

Author: Fay Vincent

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

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The rapid shifts from subject to subject greatly diminishes a good book

Oct 5, 2009

by CharlesAshbacher
posted in Just Baseball

Rating:

The personal reminiscences of former players are excellent ways to learn additional information about the history of major league baseball and in a few cases debunk some of the myths. However, it must be done well, specifically it must be organized so that it flows. That was not done here, there is little flow to the comments of the players, the stream of consciousness regularly undergoes a dramatic shift and it takes a sentence or two before you realize that the subject has changed. The two most interesting new bits of baseball history that I learned were both recounted by Elden Auker. The first was that Leo Durocher was once Babe Ruth's roommate and Durocher was caught trying to steal a gold watch and $500 from Ruth. The second was that when a group of baseball players went to Japan before the Second World War, one of the players, Moe Berg, served as a spy for the U. S. government.
The players interviewed for the book are:

*) Elden Auker
*) Bob Feller
*) Tommy Henrich
*) John "Buck" O'Neil
*) Dom Dimaggio
*) Johnny Pesky
*) Warren Spahn
*) Larry Doby
*) Ralph Kiner
*) Monte Irvin

Since there were great changes in major league baseball during the careers of these players, if you can get past the disjointed presentation, this is a good book of baseball history.

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