We Played the Game: 65 Players Remember Baseball's Greatest Era, 1947-1964

Rating:
Summary: A Truly Great History!
Review: Danny Peary has compiled an oral history that is simply as good an effort as has been done to date. The sixty-five players interviewed range from a few stars like Brooks Robinson, Del Ennis, Lew Burdette and Don Newcombe to solid career players such as Hank Sauer, Andy Seminick, Eddie Joost and Gene Woodling to guys just trying to hang on like Coot Veal, Ed Bouchee, Al Kozar and Bob Cain. The book covers the years 1947-1964 which many, including Peary have labeled the "golden era" of baseball. Most of the seminal changes of postwar baseball have been covered before of course in other works, but seldom in the words of the players themselves. At least not in the words of non-superstars. As you read the stories of these players you begin to realize the pressures they were all under in a time before free agency, long term contracts and huge endorsement money. Almost all of these guys, even the best, needed to have winter jobs to make ends meet. To understand the politics that could deny talented players opportunity in age of the reserve clause, read and reread the story of Al Kozar. In spite of the obvious disparity between today and then, one gets the feeling that ballplayers in that era seemed to enjoy the game more than their current counterparts. For all the inherent problems with the reserve clause, there seemed to be an innocence to the game that no longer exists. Any serious historian of baseball should not be without this book.

Rating:
Summary: And They Played It Well
Review: Reviewer Brislen has done a fine job of highlighting the virtues of this baseball compendium, and I recommend that readers read his review first. I have only a few points to add. Because the number of contributers is limited (65) and unevenly spread across the 17 year period, some teams and years are better represented than others. So readers wishing to follow the course of a single team or concentrate on a particular focal year may be disappointed. As to the negative side of the game--when they occur, the dislikes, criticisms, or revelations by the players are usually aimed at management, not at each other. Thus, for better or worse, those readers looking for a gossipy Ball Four writ-large may also be disappointed. Among players, there are two other recurring topics in addition to salary concerns : (1) drinking, some teams and players (usually unspecified) had a history generally unmentioned on the sports pages, and (2) race relations, the narrative presents an inside look at another subject generally untouched by sports columns of the time.

The year 1964 may mark the end of the great Yankee teams and the end of the Golden Age as recounted in the book, but its political context is also relevant. It's one year after the Kennedy assassination and one year before the great Vietnam build-up, two epochal events that have come to define an end to our national innocence. They also usher in a generational change marked by a greater willingness to challenge authority and the rules. In baseball, this rebellious spirit leads to an overturning of the restrictive reserve clause that tied players to a single team, and more subtlely, to an undermining of the working class ethic that so many fans found endearing. The pluses and minuses of these two key elements comprise something of an underlying theme that weaves in and out of the narratives, and lends the book broader historical significance.

Still and all, what lifts this work above so many others is the opportunity editor Peary provides to so many marginal and obscure players to tell their story, ones which really do constitute the fabric of the game, and how basically decent and attached to baseball these men are. Coming away from their stories, the reader begins to understand why this game alone, with its very unfashionable appearance and rhythms, has worked its way into the soul of a nation.

Rating:
Summary: Baseball memories of the no so distant past
Review: This book will invite the obvious comparisons to "The Glory of Their Times". That book was a collection of memories of men long since gone about a time in Baseball even longer gone. There was a reverence apparent in the recollections of those men that conveyed an image of a game uncorrupted by modern outside distractions. Of course, the iron rule of the owners and the "whites only" standard are just two contradictions to that image. However, there was a poetry to "The Glory of Their Times" that stays with you and clouds away those inconsistencies.

"We Played the Game" concerns a more recent time with the recollections of retired players, many of whom are still with us. It has the first-person history that "Glory" has but they apply to events that many people still recall. Where "The Glory of Their Times" is poetic, "We Played the Game" is active and interactive. It follows each season in each league through the eyes of at least one player on that team. There were 65 retired players who contributed their recollections. Due to the different tenures, military service, and trades, there are some teams in some years without a first-hand perspective. However, there are very few such omissions. The greatness of this is how the reader comes to taste the whole season in each year and in each league. Not just from the point of view of who won but also from the point of view of who lost. There's a lot of history in this book and it reads very well. Take one season at a time and enjoy a more vivid picture of the past than any newsreel would ever show you.

Rating:
Summary: Baseball memories of the no so distant past
Review: This book will invite the obvious comparisons to "The Glory of Their Times". That book was a collection of memories of men long since gone about a time in Baseball even longer gone. There was a reverence apparent in the recollections of those men that conveyed an image of a game uncorrupted by modern outside distractions. Of course, the iron rule of the owners and the "whites only" standard are just two contradictions to that image. However, there was a poetry to "The Glory of Their Times" that stays with you and clouds away those inconsistencies.

"We Played the Game" concerns a more recent time with the recollections of retired players, many of whom are still with us. It has the first-person history that "Glory" has but they apply to events that many people still recall. Where "The Glory of Their Times" is poetic, "We Played the Game" is active and interactive. It follows each season in each league through the eyes of at least one player on that team. There were 65 retired players who contributed their recollections. Due to the different tenures, military service, and trades, there are some teams in some years without a first-hand perspective. However, there are very few such omissions. The greatness of this is how the reader comes to taste the whole season in each year and in each league. Not just from the point of view of who won but also from the point of view of who lost. There's a lot of history in this book and it reads very well. Take one season at a time and enjoy a more vivid picture of the past than any newsreel would ever show you.