WE PLAYED THE GAME 65 Players Remember Baseball's Greatest Era 1947-1964

Peary, Danny (editor)

ISBN 10: 0786860081 / ISBN 13: 9780786860081

Published by Hyperion, 1994

About this Item

Illus. 643pp Indexed. Price not clipped. Fore by Lawrence S. Ritter. "Amazingly candid, often controversial, always informative." (loc O/1) Size: Oversized.

Seller Inventory # 16903

Bibliographic Details

• Title: WE PLAYED THE GAME 65 Players Remember Baseball's Greatest Era 1947-1964
• Publisher: Hyperion
• Publication Date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0786860081
• ISBN 13: 9780786860081
• Binding: Hard Cover
• Edition: First Edition Stated.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Baseball

About this title

Synopsis

1947-1964. It was a fascinating era in baseball. It began with disruption, when Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby pioneered baseball integration; and it ended with a whimper, when the unstoppable New York Yankees lost, once and for all, their dominance of the game. The years in between were the wonder years: the grass was green and real, Yogi read comics, Mantle hit moonshots, Campanella smiled infectiously and said you had to be a boy at heart to play baseball; and for the first time, baseball games were televised - live.
We thought we saw innocence. But that was before the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants went west - leaving their stunned, abandoned fans behind. That was before we saw the continued bigotry on the ballteams - and the exploitation of players by management. That was before the agents and the managers became as famous as the players - making the business of the game as important as the sport of it.
But for the men who played the game - it was a glorious time; a time when, for once in their lives, they were doing just what they wanted to be doing: playing baseball.
Danny Peary, author of the much-acclaimed Cult Baseball Players, spent years traveling the country, gathering the firsthand oral histories, remembrances, opinions, and gripes of 65 ballplayers of this magic era. A wide and inclusive cross section of players bring the years to life for us - from the Hall of Famers such as George Kell, Harmon Killebrew, Brooks Robinson, and Ralph Kiner, to the utility players and bench warmers whose names we've long forgotten, but whose memories of the game are the real fabric that our baseball dreams are made of.
Their collective voices tell the story of the era: from pitching no-hitters and arguing with managers to alcoholism, groupies, race problems, salary negotiations, and fights on and off the field. They were colorful years in baseball: Eddie Waitkus being shot by a female fan (the basis for The Natural); the on- and off-field antics of Jimmy Piersall and Bo Belinsky; Bob Cain pitching to midget Eddie Gaedel; Pedro Ramos "scouting" women; Joe DiMaggio wanting to meet Marilyn Monroe; Ralph Kiner dating Elizabeth Taylor; the A's bus being stopped by redneck cops in Florida; Roger Maris's record sixty-first homer; Ted Williams's final at-bat (a homer).
Amazingly candid, often controversial, always informative, We Played the Game tells the real story of a wonderful era of baseball history - in the words of the only men who could tell it. This book is the ultimate tribute to the great game of baseball - and the men who made it live for us.