Rating: 
Summary: Great Baseball History
Review: I grew up in the St. Louis area and am naturally a Cardinal fan (gee, does the sun come up in the east and set in the west!) so I greatly enjoyed this book. I also grew up with the idea that the Yankees were less than human, although after reading this book, they are okay, although they still remain the best team money can buy, to this day, which is not okay. Most of the book covers the players and how they became major league ball players, through their ordeals in the minor leagues, and in the cases of all the black players, racism and the difficulties arising from that. Also covered in depth are the owners, managers, scouts, and pennant races, all building up to that amazing World Series held between the Yankees and the Cardinals in October 1964. This book goes into amazing detail, and is very thorough, the next best thing to having seats to that World Series. I am too young to really remember that Series, but I do remember seeing Lou Brock at Busch Stadium stealing bases in '73 and '74, and Bob Gibson pitching in 1974, his last year, one of the best ever hurlers in the game, and these are treasured memories for me. But you don't have to be a Yankee or Cardinal fan to enjoy this book, it should be fascinating reading for any baseball fan, and it really highlights how the game has changed over the years.
Rating:
Summary: I couldn't put the book down.
Review: I really, really, really, really liked this book. There are no words to describe this book. You have to read it. If you are a true baseball fan you will be missing a well written book that describes the events of the summer of 1964 regarding the Yankees and the Cardinals. Even if you are not a Yankee fan (who could be) or a Cardinal fan, you will love this book.
Rating:
Summary: Social History Written for a Broad Audience
Review: I recently reread David Halberstam's "October 1964," about the World Series between the New York Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals. As other reviewers of this book on Amazon.com have noted, it is social history of a high order. Halberstam uses the World Series of 1964 as a foil to discuss race relations in the decade, both inside baseball and out, for the Yankees represented an approach to society reflective of a status quo that had much more to do with police brutality against civil rights workers in Selma than the Yankees would care to admit. Meantime, the Cardinals expressed much more of the changing climate in America.
As Halberstam points out, it looked as if all the ingredients of a great team were coming together for the Cardinals in the early 1960s. The team had all of the attributes of its successful teams of the past, excellent pitching, great defense, and speed. But there was something more that was critical to the Cardinals success in 1964, as Halberstam emphasizes, how the team bridged the racial divide in the United States to create a cohesive unit. Everyone who visited the Cardinals locker room recognized that something was different from other teams. The African American, White, and Latino players seemed to have an easier relationship than elsewhere. No question, many of the premier players for the Cardinals were African Americans in 1964--Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Curt Flood, and Bill White--and they certainly helped set the tenor of the clubhouse. But southerners like Ken Boyer and Tim McCarver were also committed to the successful integration of American life and brought that perspective to the team as well. This relative racial harmony was significant for the Cardinals and stood in striking contrast to the problems present with the Yankees and other major league teams.
One anecdote about the Cardinals offered in "October 1964" elucidates this issue. Curt Flood recounted a story in "October 1964" of going to Cardinals spring training camp in Florida in the latter 1950s and finding himself sent to an African American boarding house in another town, instead of staying in the same hotel where his white teammates were housed. A sensitive and thoughtful man, Flood was both hurt and angered by this situation and when the opportunity presented he said something. When the Cardinals owner, August A. Busch Jr., saw him at the training camp and struck up a conversation Flood let slip that the situation of the black players was not the best. Busch was genuinely surprised that Flood and the other black players were not staying at the main hotel with the "rest of the guys" and promised to do something about it. He went out and purchased a hotel in St. Petersburg where all the Cardinals could stay together with their families during spring training.
In later years, players from other teams recalled visiting that hotel to see members of the Cards and finding cookouts taking place with entire families, black and white, together. The fact that they lived together for several weeks during spring training may have broken down the barriers of prejudice more than any other action the Cardinals could have taken. The team was, without question, more successful in integrating its players than many other major league clubs. This contributed to the success of the team on the field and the attraction of the team off it.
Halberstam emphasizes that the match between the Cardinals and Yankees in 1964 had symbolic value far beyond the match-up on the field. The Cardinals were a well-integrated team with excellent African American players. The Yankees had failed to integrate until the mid-1950s and then only modestly so. Indeed, their first African American player was St. Louis native Elston Howard and he only came up to the Yankees in 1955. A superb player, the Yankees ballyhooed Howard's breaking of the color line on the team by saying that he was a true "gentleman," and thereby appropriate to wear Yankee pinstripes. One wit observed that this was so much nonsense, after all since when did baseball players have to be "gentlemen?" The Yanks in 1964 were also a franchise on the verge of collapse, with aging superstars and not much down on the farm to call up to the majors. Their best player, Mickey Mantle, was nearing the end of his Hall of Fame career, and his replacement in the outfield would be Bobby Mercer, a decent journeyman player but not someone who would carry on the tradition of Ruth-DiMaggio-Mantle.
The Cardinals victory in the World Series in 1964 symbolized for Halberstam the death of the old manner of baseball, and thereafter every championship team would have African American stars as a critical element to success. It is an excellent discussion of the subject, well-written and thought-provoking.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Baseball Book I Have Ever Read!
Review: I thought I was a knowledgeable baseball fan until I read this book. The depth and insight that the author provides is beyond comprehension. We find out why the National League was the superior league for many years. We also learn that the Yankees could have been far greater than they actually were (they could have signed Willie Mays and Hank Aaron to name a few greats) if not for their own predjudice. We get a great insight to the personalities of baseball legends (Bob Gibson and Lou Brock were fascinating). On top of everything one of the most exciting World Series unfolds. The author's depictions are so vivid, I felt I was the catcher for Whitey Ford or Bob Gibson instead of just a reader of a book. On top of that, even knowing the outcome I felt the tension of a real game as the story was being told. If you only read one baseball book, this one should be it!
Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: If you are a baseball junkie, this is a captivating, must have book to add to your collection.
Rating:
Summary: A Fall Classic
Review: In 1964 the Yankees and the Cardinals matched up in the World Series as two contrasting teams. The Yankees were a decaying dynasty; this was the end of their incredible sixteen year run from 1949-1964, and the stars they had always counted on, like Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle, were battling injuries on the downside of their careers. The Cardinals, meanwhile, countered the Yankees aging arrogance with a youthful hunger that couldn't be denied. A racially diverse group of young players like Bob Gibson, Tim McCarver, Ken Boyer, Curt Flood, Lou Brock, and Bill White were too much for New York, and baseball entered a new era. Halberstam focuses mainly on the personal stories of the men involved, as well as the social climate of the times and how the two teams responded to it. The Yankees were reluctant to integrate, their management confident that they could continue to win with white players. The Cardinals were probably the most integrated team in baseball, but there was almost no internal conflict. Their clubhouse leader, in fact, was a black man, Bob Gibson. This book is a classic.
Rating: 
Summary: Giants on the Earth in those days. And Cardinals.
Review: In the ESPN.com vernacular of the present day, "October 1964" has recently been debunked (but lovingly) by columnist/author Rob Neyer. While the two giants who square off in David Halberstam's tale of an evolving America in 1964 are the suffocating white Establishment (the Yankees) and the young minority upstarts (the Cardinals), Neyer's contention is that this watershed really occurred one year earlier. That was, after all, the year the Yankees were memorably swept by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. However, Halberstam's take on the demise of the Establishment Yankees is the more accurate one. The '63 World Series was won single-handedly by a couple of white guys, Koufax and Drysdale. Yes, the Dodgers did have five black regulars in the starting lineup, but apart from the second inning of the opening game, they just didn't hit, or make history the way Koufax did. The 1964 World Series was won by the heroics of men that the Yankees didn't understand, by men who couldn't play for the Yankees, by virtue of who they were. The Yankees could accept being struck out 15 times by Sandy Koufax, but when they struck out 13 times against Bob Gibson -- on whom their sole scouting report was woefully inaccurate -- it was an outrage. Gibson wasn't supposed to have courage, or determination! Lou Brock wasn't supposed to get more hits in the Series than Mickey Mantle! And yet, the '64 Yankees didn't go quietly in the Series, and in fact they scored more runs than St. Louis. Mantle had an incredible seven games. The Yanks had more walks and homers than the Cardinals, and their pitching (behind white youngers Jim Bouton and Mel Stottlemyre) basically matched St. Louis out for out. At least on paper. The Series turning point came when the Yanks' lone black pitcher, Al Downing, gave up a grand slam homer to a Southern good-ol'-boy, Ken Boyer. This is why "October 1964" is a great book. It's no mystery as to who the heroes are -- the book frontpiece is a team photograph, and that team isn't the Yankees. However, the bad guys gave it a mighty effort. 40 years later, it's hard to remember how much the Yankees represented a world that simply had to end. As someone born well after '64, I didn't even know at first that spring training in Florida was segregated that late. The struggles of Gibson and Brock and Flood and Bill White were relatively new stories when Halberstam first told them. Since Halberstam's skill is in creating whole lives in three or four pages, these mini-biographies are the heart of the book, and not the more desultory game descriptions that reduce the World Series to a sequence of monochrome postcards. The best anecdote in the book has little to do with the World Series. Yankee pitcher Ralph Terry, then a rookie, brashly introduces himself to a few old men watching a baseball game. "Well, Ralph," one of the men says. "my name is Cy Young. And these fellas over here next to me are Zack Wheat and Ty Cobb." If you subscribe to the theory of baseball as social history, "October 1964" is a book you'd do well to have on your shelf, and one worth reading every few years.
Rating:
Summary: October 1964-More than it seems.
Review: It is rare indeed when a reader comes across a book that delivers more than what
is expected. David Halberstam's October 1964 is a very fine example of this. The story
that Halberstam weaves is, on the surface, a tale of men playing professional baseball in
the mid sixties. The drama that takes place throughout the summer of 1964, culminating
with that year's fall classic in October is, in itself, great reading for any baseball fan. The
legends of Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Mickey Mantle, and Roger Maris seem to grow
before the readers very eyes. But this is much more than a story of men playing baseball. The year 1964 was a volatile time in the history of our country, and the ballplayers
playing for the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinal that year reflected much of the
country's turmoil. Lou Brock and Curt Flood's incredible drive and determination to show
white America that they were badly mistaken about the ability of black ballplayers, and
Bob Gibson's incredible anger about what was occurring, are excellent examples of the
changing race relations evident in the United States at this time. The New York Yankees
slow process of integrating the organization illustrates that progress in this endevor was
plodding at best. However, race relations were not the only changing forces at work in
baseball at this time. The modern media was just beginning to emerge during the early 1960's and
Halberstam's treatment of how this new media clashed with the midwestern populist views
of Roger Maris and was embraced(at times) by the gregarious Mickey Mantle is
fascinating. Most of the players, if not all, during this time period did not yet understand
that how they performed on the field was now only part of the story. Again, the study of
Maris during his quest for 61 homers in 1961 is a great example of the coming storm of the
celebrity driven media. Being a history and education major in college myself, I find one of the best
examples that the book has to offer of changing America was the clashing ideologies of the
newer players and the older players and managers. Players such as Ray Sadecki, Phil
Linz, and Joe Pepitone, were indeed alien to the old guard. Even an item such as Joe
Pepitone's bringing a hairdryer in to the clubhouse seemed stunning to the older players.
It was a changing world, and as has been quoted in the past, baseball reflected America.
In summation, Halberstam's book is a history book, a psychology book, a
sociology book, and, of course, a baseball book. For people who actually remember what
was going on in 1964 it is especially poignant, baseball fan or not. But for myself I now
have a better understanding of why, as a boy, I once gazed upon the ball cards of Mantle
and Boyer and Brock and Ford and held them in awe. They were men who were larger
than life at a time when only the tough survived. After reading Halberstam's account of a
long ago October my feeling of awe, admiration, and hero worship have increased tenfold
Rating:
Summary: October 1964-More than it seems.
Review: It is rare indeed when a reader comes across a book that delivers more than whatis expected. David Halberstam's October 1964 is a very fine example of this. The storythat Halberstam weaves is, on the surface, a tale of men playing professional baseball inthe mid sixties. The drama that takes place throughout the summer of 1964, culminatingwith that year's fall classic in October is, in itself, great reading for any baseball fan. Thelegends of Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Mickey Mantle, and Roger Maris seem to growbefore the readers very eyes. But this is much more than a story of men playing baseball. The year 1964 was a volatile time in the history of our country, and the ballplayersplaying for the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinal that year reflected much of thecountry's turmoil. Lou Brock and Curt Flood's incredible drive and determination to showwhite America that they were badly mistaken about the ability of black ballplayers, andBob Gibson's incredible anger about what was occurring, are excellent examples of thechanging race relations evident in the United States at this time. The New York Yankeesslow process of integrating the organization illustrates that progress in this endevor wasplodding at best. However, race relations were not the only changing forces at work inbaseball at this time. The modern media was just beginning to emerge during the early 1960's andHalberstam's treatment of how this new media clashed with the midwestern populist viewsof Roger Maris and was embraced(at times) by the gregarious Mickey Mantle isfascinating. Most of the players, if not all, during this time period did not yet understandthat how they performed on the field was now only part of the story. Again, the study ofMaris during his quest for 61 homers in 1961 is a great example of the coming storm of thecelebrity driven media. Being a history and education major in college myself, I find one of the bestexamples that the book has to offer of changing America was the clashing ideologies of thenewer players and the older players and managers. Players such as Ray Sadecki, PhilLinz, and Joe Pepitone, were indeed alien to the old guard. Even an item such as JoePepitone's bringing a hairdryer in to the clubhouse seemed stunning to the older players.It was a changing world, and as has been quoted in the past, baseball reflected America. In summation, Halberstam's book is a history book, a psychology book, asociology book, and, of course, a baseball book. For people who actually remember whatwas going on in 1964 it is especially poignant, baseball fan or not. But for myself I nowhave a better understanding of why, as a boy, I once gazed upon the ball cards of Mantleand Boyer and Brock and Ford and held them in awe. They were men who were largerthan life at a time when only the tough survived. After reading Halberstam's account of along ago October my feeling of awe, admiration, and hero worship have increased tenfold
Rating: 
Summary: I have to read this for u.s. history class
Review: It's not bad actually...and i know i would never pick it up if my teacher haven't assign it to us in class..but i guess the baseball fans should read it..because they would love it...for the people who have no favor in baseball(like me) and are just surfing this for the book review instead of reading it...i guess there's no luck..but hey that's life...:)
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