Customer Reviews

Yankee Colors: The Glory Years of the Mantle Era

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mantle, Maris,Howard,and Stengle live again in the book YANKEE COLORS.
The photos,most rarely seen,Jump off of page after page of breataking color photography. These images make you pine for these long gone Gods of Baseball. The book is also well written, making it a joy to read and gawk at. The black and white photos are not bad either.
A must for yankee fans of all ages, and Baseball fans in general.

I received this book as a birthday present. I grew up in Bergen County, New Jersey in the 1960s and was a die hard Yankee fan. Looking at the beautiful pictures of Yankee stadium and the greats from that era brought back the memories of the best years (in my opinion) to be a Yankee fan. I especially liked the sections regarding the World Series with the Dodgers (1955-56, and 1963), the Braves (1957-58), the Pirates (1960), the Reds (1961), the Giants (1962) and the Cardinals (1964). In providing these stories and the supporting pictures, the book is surprisingly not biased towards the Yankees. It gives a good balanced showing of what happened. So, it is even a good book for a baseball fan of that era. For that reason, I highly recommend it especially for Yankee fans but also for all baseball fans of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

All this book needs is Dizzy Dean saying, "The Yank-kees a-coming to bat..." as only he could say it. (Always wondered why a former Cardinal player was so enthralled with the Yankees as an announcer!!!)

This book is a treat to a child of the fifties and sixties, especially those of us who collected baseball cards and knew the value, even then, of a good, mint-condition Mickey Mantle.

This is a great book, a thrilling return to the days of yesteryear when heroes could be heroes, when we were young and unencumbered with the cares of the world.

This book is a trip back in time. And its a good, enjoyable and worthwhile trip, no matter if you are a Yankee fan or a Yankee hater. This was and is baseball at its best. This book is a treasure trove of memories, warm thoughts and wishes--wishes that the game could be once again as it was then.

If you are a child of the fifties and sixties, it is a chronicle of our lives, a more simpler, pure, clean time in our lives...before money and too much media destroyed it all.

Look back, remember, feel good and then, feel a little sadness that these days are gone and these players, who played for the love of the game are gone, the likes of which are never to return.

Although born in 1963 and too young to have recollections of the early 1950s through 1964 time span covered by this book, I recommend Yankee Colors: The Glory Years of the Mantle Era. There are many other baseball books that account for the same period, but few offers color pictures.

The book does have some flaws:

1. Misleading title; not every photograph is in color: those of spring training and the 1955 and 1956 World Series are completely in black and white.

2. Lack of coverage, in pictures or text, of the 1951, 1952 and 1953 World Series, all of which Mantle played in.

3. Errors in content. For example, the 1963 World Series section has a picture of Jim Bouton warming up at Yankee Stadium, with the caption claiming this was game three (game three was played at Dodger Stadium).

For these shortcomings, I rated it four stars instead of five. Nevertheless, Yankee Colors is a worthy purchase; seeing the photographs of the stars of yesteryear, such as Yogi Berra, Roger Maris, Tony Kubek, Whitey Ford, and of course, Mickey Mantle, plus other great players including Sandy Koufax, Willie Mays and Bill Mazeroski, etc., in flannel uniforms, as well as that of long gone ball parks like Crosley Field, Forbes Field, and the pre-mid 1970s rennovation Yankee Stadium lets one travel back in time to a simpler era, when baseball was still more of a game, before it was taken over by free agency, battles between millionaire players and billionaire owners, greed, and steroids.

Excellant!!! I grew up listening to the Yankee's on my fathers radio, we didn't have Tv in those days, 1941 to 1952 when we finally got electric and a TV. That was in Kunkletown/Kresgiville Pa. I lived my married life in NJ and often went to the newer Yankee statium in the Reggie, years. Boy does this book bring back long time memories, I would recomend this picture book to any Yankee lover. My Daughter-IN-Laws sister lived next to Yogi in Montclair NJ and he is just bigger than life and just as nice and pleasant.

Although some of the photos in this book aren't "colorful" (black & white) and the ommission of any World Series pictures during the early '50s ('51-'53) leaves a slight void in your viewing pleasure, what's left is indeed a photographic treasure of the great New York Yankee teams of the "Mickey Mantle era". And that's not so bad.

Personally, I don't care if classic pictures are in color or black & white. Quite often, the most memorable shots of baseball's glorious history are in black & white. What makes them memorable are the players and the moment that is frozen in time. Who could deny the black & white shot of a jubilant Yogi Berra jumping into the arms of a startled Don Larsen at the end of Larsen's perfect game in the '56 World Series is unforgetable? Or for that matter, the famous black & white snap shot of Larsen's last pitch of that game with an alert Billy Martin ready for action in the background; which also shows the memorable situation---one more pitch to go for baseball history?

Of course, the photographs taken by Marvin Newman are predominantly originals (& in full, living color) to the vast majority of the reading audience; and that's where the big treat comes from. I got goose bumps just looking at the cover photo, with Mantle taking his classic, power cut at a pitch. Awesome.

Yankee fans will certainly treasure this wonderful collection, along with die-hard fans of the game itself. It's worth the price of admission.

As a Mantle fan the pictures were worth the purchase. The 60's were the golden era, and this books relects that.

A MUST for any Yankee fan during the Mickey Mantle era. Fabulous color photos of the players AND the stadium as it was, prior to the renovation of 1974-'75. A couple of the captions are incorrect, but it does not deter from the photos.

Very good photography of a great era of baseball. Some fact checking was needed on some of the captions. For instance, Page 46, mentions that the Yankees were swept in the World Series by Cincinnati in 1977, it was actually 1976.
Page 48 - It mentions Mantle played in his first World Series in 1951 against the San Francisco Giants. They were the the New York Giants.
Page 127 - Has a photo of Jim O'toole pitching for the Reds and identifies him as Joe Jay.
Those were some of the errors I found in the first read through. Nevertheless, the photos often speak for themselves.