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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "NINETEEN MINI-BIOGRAPHIES WRAPPED IN A 1956 WORLD SERIES PERFECT GAME", September 29, 2009
This review is from: Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game and the Men Who Made It Happen (Hardcover)
The fifth game of the 1956 World Series on October 8, 1956 between the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium was truly a game for the ages. Pitching for the Yankees that day was Don Larsen who when his entire career was complete... his statistics could not be considered much more than mediocre. In fact his lifetime stats show that he lost MORE games than he won. But... for this one game... he presented a master piece that had never been done before or since! Up until that day in 1956 no pitcher in the history of baseball had ever pitched a *NO-HITTER* in the World Series. Larsen not only pitched a *NO-HITTER*... but he also pitched a *PERFECT-GAME*. As of todays date 2009... another fifty-three-years-later... and this epic game still resides alone on the highest pedestal of World Series pitching magnificence. The story of this game has been told before... but never in the manner presented here by this author. What the author has so marvelously created is an inning by inning narrative that effortlessly flows by chapter into a mini-biography of each of the NINETEEN PLAYERS (including Larsen) involved in this game that became an instant classic.
I am a lifetime baseball fanatic who came from New York when it was almost a rite of passage that the Yankees and Dodgers would meet in the Fall Classic. These two neighboring teams met in the 1941... 1947... 1949... 1952... 1953... 1955... and 1956 World Series... so all the names here are familiar to me and yet I learned many new interesting facts about the players personal lives as well as their accomplishments... and disappointments on the field. For a potential reader who didn't benefit from the same exposure as I did... you would probably have to read ten to twenty separate baseball books to accrue the knowledge that this author has melded together in this crowning achievement of 1940's and 1950's baseball.
The chapters are broken down into the following players:
1. Don Larsen
2. Sal Maglie
3. Jackie Robinson and Gil McDougald
4. Sandy Amoros
5. Carl Furillo
6. Roy Campanella
7. Billy Martin
8. Duke Snider
9. Mickey Mantle
10. Pee Wee Reese
11. Yogi Berra
12. Andy Carey
13. Jim Gilliam
14. Enos Slaughter
15. Gil Hodges
16. Joe Collins
17. Hank Bauer
18. Dale Mitchell
If that isn't enough... after these eighteen exhilarating chapters... there is a nineteenth chapter entitled "AFTERMATH"... and this chapter is almost like getting a truck load of extra XMAS presents the day after XMAS! The author having probably read my mind... and any real baseball loving fans mind... then details where life on and off the field took every one of these nineteen ballplayers subsequent to the 1956 World Series. One of the many super interesting points brought up is the fact that every player on the field that day... other than Larsen and his catcher Yogi Berra... and I mean everyone *INCLUDING* Larsen's other seven teammates on the field at the time... agree that the last pitch of the game to Brooklyn's pinch hitter Dale Mitchell that was called a strike and ended the game... was a ball! Mickey Mantle said: "I HAD A CLEAR VIEW FROM CENTER FIELD, AND IF I WAS UNDER OATH, I'D HAVE TO SAY THE PITCH LOOKED LIKE IT WAS OUTSIDE." "ANDY CAREY, WHO HAD AN EVEN BETTER VIEW FROM THIRD BASE (BECAUSE MITCHELL WAS A LEFT-HANDED BATTER), LIKEWISE AGREED THAT THE LAST PITCH TO DALE MITCHELL WAS HIGH." GIL MCDOUGALD FROM SHORTSTOP SAID: "IT WASN'T EVEN CLOSE, IT WAS HIGH. EVEN ENOS SLAUGHTER, SURVEYING THE SCENE FROM LEFT FIELD, SIMILARLY TOLD A MEMBER OF THE BASEBALL HALL OF FAME STAFF THAT THE PITCH WAS HIGH." "Years later the Dodgers appeared to get some vindication from the home-plate umpire himself." "BABE PINELLI TOLD ME LATER, SAID DUKE SNIDER, THAT HE WANTED TO GO OUT ON A NO-HITTER IN A WORLD SERIES. THAT WAS THE LAST GAME HE WAS GOING TO UMPIRE. SO ANYTHING CLOSE WAS A STRIKE."
I recommend this book highly for every baseball fan... but it's more than a recommendation... it's a necessity... for any fan who wants to relive the highlights of the 1940's and 1950's... *WHEN BASEBALL WAS STILL A GAME!*
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unique look at the best game ever, October 4, 2009
This review is from: Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game and the Men Who Made It Happen (Hardcover)
Even after 54 years, Don Larsen's perfecto is the greatest game ever pitched. It was the first perfect game in the majors in 34 years and was done in a full Yankee Stadium against the Boys of Summer Brooklyn Dodgers, with a national TV audience. Pressure?
Lew Paper has given us a special take on this magical sports moment. He's broken down the game by bringing forth the 19 players who appeared in the box score - the most historic game any of them were ever in. They were all just passing through on their way to the Baseball Encyclopedia (some to the Hall of Fame), but on this day, they were part of baseball lore. And now, baseball literature.
Beautifully presented, this is a wonderful look at some superstars and some journeymen who all converged together to witness history. We know a lot about Yogi and Jackie, Campy and Mickey, but the supporting cast represent some of the most interesting baseball lives of their era.
Lew interviewed the living players or family members of the deceased ones and has given us a book that offers a new way to tell the story of a single game. Like Dan Okrent's classic "Nine Innings," this book will take its place as baseball literature. A terrific read!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Is This the Most Famous World Series Game Ever Played?, October 18, 2010
Would it be possible to write a fairly lengthy (360 pages) non-fiction book about a single baseball game? Some would probably be skeptical. Others would say a definite "no". Author Lew Paper would not agree, and to prove them wrong, he has done just that. His book, PERFECT: DON LARSEN'S MIRACULOUS WORLD SERIES GAME AND THE MEN WHO MADE IT HAPPEN, recounts a most unique game in major league baseball history: the only perfect game in World Series play (1903 to the present).
The day (afternoon games in those days) was Monday, October 8, 1956. The place: fabled Yankee Stadium in the Bronx section of New York City with 64,519 paying customers on hand. The teams who geared up for combat (baseball style) were the best in the US: New York's American League Yankees with their glitzy record of 16 World Series triumphs against the National League's Brooklyn Dodgers, the loveable but considerably less successful "Bums" (only one World Series triumph). The best of seven series was tied at two games each, and Game 5 would feature a pitching match between Brooklyn's Sal ("the barber") Maglie (he wasn't reluctant to throw close to the batter's whiskers) and the Yankees' Don ("the gooney bird") Larsen.
At this point some readers may still be wondering how or if one could write a 350 page book on a bseball game that lasted about two hours. I'll begin by revealing that there is rather little in the book about the game itself. Oh, all 27 outs are accounted for and described. But Mr. Paper apparently decided that a book going from out number one through 27 might not quite be what the reader wanted. So what he has done, essentially, is to write a collective biography of the 19 players who took part in the game, devoting a chapter to each of them. This makes for a somewhat different yet, at times, tedious book. (Lots of repetition; it seems their lives were rather similar.) I suppose the book bears some resemblance to Roger Kahn's THE BOYS OF SUMMER, though I admit it has been several decades since I read Kahn. A final chapter of this book (#19 "Aftermath") tells what happened to the 19 players later in life. A number remained in the game, several ending up as managers, in typical baseball fashion. Quite a few died young. None ended up in jail or prison, with Billy Martin and Duke Snider perhaps coming closest.
Oh, yes, the game itself! The Yankees won 2 to 0, with Yankee pitcher Larsen retiring all 27 of the Brooklyn batters he faced. (In baseball terminology, "retiring" means getting them out or preventing them from reaching first base.) So, to put this in perspective, in the over 100 years of baseball's grand climax ("World Series"), no other pitcher has ever accomplished what Larsen did that day. Now if you're interested in reading an analysis of what happened to enable Larsen to have achieved this, you won't find it here. There is very little analysis, interpretation, or even conjecture. The author is content to tell readers what happened and to describe the lives of those who participated. But we don't even learn that much about the hero, Larsen. We find out he smoked cigarettes between innings and didn't know what a "perfect game" was!
Tim Koerner October 18, 2010
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