Customer Reviews

1939: Baseball's Tipping Point

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I've been a baseball fan for over 50 years and I have a library full of baseball books. I've even done some free-lance baseball writng of my own. So I don't give out praise lightly. This is a wonderful book and I would have to rank it on my list of Top 10 All-Time Favorites. It is more than just a baseball book...it covers a slice of Americana that all students of American history should find of interest.

The author has done a compelling job developing his premise that 1939 was a extremely important year in the history of baseball and in the history of the United States. The book is actually a collection of twelve essays covering pivotal events and dominant personalities from the baseball world of 1939. Other reviewers have covered these topics, which include notables such as Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Lou Gerhig, Leo Durocher, and the great broadcaster Red Barber. I found each essay to be well written and highly informative. Mr Boston has certainly done his research on the selected subjects and he writes in an engaging, highly enjoyable style that kept me turning the pages.

Even though most of the material was familiar territory to an old basball fan like me, I found that I learned something from each essay. Leo Durocher is my favorite character in baseball, and I've studied him intently. And yet I found the chapter devoted to him to be delightful and contained a lot of information that I was not familiar with. Likewise, the chapter on the Reds' great manager Bill McKechnie - one of the lesser known personalities that the author covers - was actually my favorite; and Mr.Boston has convinced me that Bill McKechnie is one of the most underrated managers in the history of the game. Other essays, such as the ones on the Negro Leagues, the founding of Cooperstown, and the advent of televison in baseball were also well done.

If you are a baseball fan as I am - or just a fan of American history - do yourself a favor and read "1939: Baseball's Tipping Point." Trust me...you won't regret it.

This informative and engaging book covers the state of baseball in a key year. In 1939 Lou Gherig retired due to a tragic illness, Bob Feller emerged to win 24 games, Ted Williams arrived in Boston, and the Hall of Fame and Little League World Series began. That was the year the last holdouts (Dodgers, Giants, Yankees) began radio broadcasts, night baseball increased, and television was even used experimentally. Readers learn about broadcaster Red Barber of Brooklyn, the thriving Negro Leagues, and increasing editorials for ending baseball's color barrier. There is also a look at umpire Bill Klem, and Cincinnati's "Deacon" Bill McKechnie, who'se intellect and patience were (and remain) a rarity among managers. Author Talmage Boston provides us with an 12 documented and easy-reading chapters. The result is an informative, enjoyable read for old-timers, and anybody else interested in the game.

Baseball fan or not, you will love Talmage Boston's 1939: Baseball's Tipping Point. The chapters on Lou Gehrig and the Negro Leagues will move you, and the chapter about the Baseball Hall of Fame will surprise you. It's a fascinating read, written from the heart, but with a lot of sweat from the brow. Baseball players were my heroes when I was a kid, but Boston's book is better than most games I've been to lately. Hope he publishes another one soon.

Hats off to Talmage! Being an avid baseball fan, I have read many baseball books. I discovered many new significant factual nuggets and saw a great number of photographs that I'd not seen before. Obviously written by someone with a great passion for the game of baseball. Can not wait for his next book.

Assemble baseball historians over their favorite adult beverages with the topic "most important," "most pivotal," "most famous" baseball season and the conversation heatedly rolls.
Strong cases can be made for several seasons from baseball's past. In my pomposity I always insisted 1947 the most pivotal because of Branch Rickey's breaking of the game's color code with Jackie Robinson. There's no argument, 1947 was a strong and very important year for the game and for society.
My friend and Dallas-lawyer-baseball historian-writer Talmage Boston has changed my mind with his work "1939 Baseball's Tippping Point." So much import was packed that year into a six month baseball season.
Over two years before U.S. involvement in World War II, young up and coming stars outfielder Ted Williams and pitcher Bob Feller had begun showing the stuff that would lead to the Hall of Fame. That year, neither had become jaundiced due to what both thought was an excessive amount of career time lost due to the war effort. Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio began defining his career as elite that year.
In 1939 Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Larry McPhail began dragging a lowly franchise out of the doldrums. By hiring fiery Leo Durocher to manage the club, McPhail served notice to his players and other clubs that wins were expected in Brooklyn. By wisely breaking a very silly, sophomoric ban on radio broadcasts, McPhail with the hiring of southerner Red Barber to call Dodgers games, took soap operas away from New York women and gave them the game. In doing so, the Dodgers created a completely new, educated genre of fan--females. That year, Barber also broadcast baseball's first televised game.
If 1947 marked the official end to appartheid in baseball, 1939 represented the time when newspaper editors both black and white began screaming for social change. Bigotry stories abounded. One of the most famous was a Daughters of American Revolution attempted ban on black singer Marion Anderson's appearance on the steps of the Lincoln Monument. Press coverage beat the ban.
While the Baseball Hall of Fame opened its doors in 1939 to its first class including Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson, in Cooperstown,New York, historians began refuting claims that native Cooperstown son Abner Doubleday invented the game.
Little League Baseball began operations in 1939, giving youngsters ages 8-12 their first shot at an organized style of play.
But perhaps the most famous historical item coming out of '39 was Yankees slugger Lou Gehrig's demise. Gehrig that year had been diagnosed with Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis, a form of polio, now known as Lou Gehrig's disease. As Gehrig stepped out of the playing field limelight, he gave his famous, "Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth," speech to a sold out Yankee Stadium.
To me, "1939 Baseball's Tipping Point," went one step further. It is a missive that should be read and re-read by baseball fans as one more poignant reminder how this grand game became that way.

1939: Baseball's Tipping Point is simply one of the best historical baseball books that I have ever read. It covers a remarkably wide range of baseball topics, with the common denominators being informative, insightful writing and relevance to both then and now.

If you thought you knew quite a bit about the particular event or story line, Talmage will teach you more. He will show you new ways of looking at it and what it has meant to the ensuing 66 years. If you are unfamiliar with the event, you will be brought up to speed quickly and enjoyably. If your goal is to be entertained, not educated, this book is the right choice as well. It also provides the flexibility of sitting down for an extended read through the entire book or, when time is short, pick a chapter that sounds particularly appealing at that moment.

You can gain unique additional perspectives on Gehrig, DiMaggio, Williams and Feller and other personalities that made an impact. But the even better stuff, is when Talmage analyzes the evolution and future implications of broader institutions - radio and TV broadcasting (with the key role of Red Barber), the development of Baseball's Hall of Fame and Museum at Cooperstown, the path to crossing the color line and the invention and development of the Little League.

A bonus is a memorable introduction by John Grisham. But, I would venture to say that John might tell you that he would be hard pressed to top the research and writing style found in the remainder of the book.

I almost never reread a book. This one I did. I enjoyed it every bit as much and learned all the more the second time around. Once again, everything old was new again.

This is an excellent baseball book -- about the unique baseball happenings in 1939. Each chapter is devoted to a special story ... Ted Williams rookie season with the Bosox, the Yankee team after Gehrig retired and other interesting stories. There is a lot of great background regarding each story -- and is very well written.

This would be a great gift for Christmas or birthday

Greg Langdon

I have read this book....TWICE. You need to read it because it is different from any book on baseball you have ever read. Instead of it being about a team or a player, it identifies a YEAR, a time period that, basically, changed baseball in all areas FOREVER: the first televised game, the first games at night, the founding of Little League was in 1939, the passing of Lou Gehrig but the rookie year of Ted Williams, etc. I learned things I had never known about baseball and WHY this was such a pivotal year for the game. I've read a ton of books on baseball and donated them and gave them away. This one is mine to keep.

If you had to pick one year in a particular sport - in this case baseball - and argue that that year marked something special, Talmage Boston would argue that that year was 1939. To him, that year marked a sea change - a "tipping point" in baseball in many ways, from the departure of Lou Gehrig and the arrival of Ted Williams, to Joe DiMaggio's greatest season. But that season was significant for many other reasons behind the scenes, he argues, including milestones in the radio and television broadcast of games, the development of the ground rules that umpires still follow, and the beginnings of Little League.
One fact that makes 1939 easy to tag as a significant year in the history of the game is an obvious one - the opening of baseball's Hall of Fame at Cooperstown in what was supposedly the game's centennial year. But Boston goes to some lengths to explain how that came about, and the reasons why the Doubleday myth was born and adopted by baseball. In what were, being a history buff, my favorite chapters, he shows that while it is demonstrably true that Doubleday didn't invent the game (in fact, he never he heard of it) and the first game wasn't in Cooperstown, or even in 1839, Cooperstown is still an outstanding place to commemorate something, and baseball is lucky that it's baseball. Boston doesn't pull any punches in showing the fraud behind the legend of the games' origin, which is admirable coming from an author that obviously loves the game very much. In any event, the game was truly coming of age in 1939 as he posits, but it was obviously not there yet, as the chapter on the experience of black ballplayers in the Negro League shows. But the stage was slowly being set, and players who would go on to integrate the game in the next decade are already coming onto the scene in 1939.
Personally, I know virtually nothing about baseball beyond three years of Little League and watching Bull Durham and Field of Dreams. I bumped into Joe DiMaggio - literally - one afternoon on a sidewalk in Washington D.C. after Edward Bennett Williams' funeral in 1988, and it wasn't until ten minutes later that I finally realized who that tall, distinguished looking gentleman that looked so familiar was. I am ashamed to say that I connected his face with Marilyn Monroe and Mr. Coffee before I could come up with his name and realize he had done something in connection with baseball as well. (Okay, I'm not ashamed of the Marilyn Monroe part - just the Mr. Coffee one). I have a library of nearly 2,000 books, but this is the only one that has anything remotely to do with baseball. Frankly, the only reason I bought the book is because Talmage is a friend of mine and we are active in various State Bar of Texas activities, and I like having inscribed copies of books. But damned if it didn't turn out to be a good book - who knew Talmage could write? I had the whole thing read within two or three days of getting it because I just couldn't put it down. As I said, I know nothing about baseball, but this book turned out to be a great place to start (so would a Physician's Desk Reference, as it turns out, but that's a different story). Even starting with no real reference points, I could still follow what was happening and understand what was important, and why.
And I think that's for two reasons. First, and this is an important point, this is a very well written book. It's always a good practice to be suspicious of lawyers as authors, because we are - generally speaking - lousy writers. As Judge Jerome Frank once observed "lawyers are excused from the necessity of interesting their readers and -- let's face the evidence -- they take advantage of this enviable exemption." Opposing counsel and judges have to read what we write, no matter how badly we write it. That's one reason I was, frankly, astonished at how good this book is. This book tells the stories it selects very, very well. It is an admirable addition to the tremendous tradition our country has of outstanding sportswriting (which I am familiar with through football, so it's not like I'm totally unfamiliar with the genre here). No clunsy sentences, no overblown rhetoric - just good, concise writing, with an eye for the right detail. (Okay, I hate endnotes, but I recognize I'm in the minority here in actually enjoying footnotes, so I'll let that go).
The second reason I liked the book so well is because at its heart it really isn't telling stories about baseball. It is telling universal stories - stories of men struggling against the limitations of their ability, their age, their nature, or, most tragically in the case of Lou Gehrig, a debilitating disease, to compete in a game that meant everything to them. Boston really isn't that interested in who won or lost particular games - the point is who won or lost in the larger struggle they were engaged in, or, in the old phrase, how they played the game. The game is, at bottom, a mirror in which the character of the men who played it is reflected. And that's something that is always worth reading stories about. Especially if the stories are told this well.