Customer Reviews

Yankees Century: Voices and Memories of the Pinstripe Past

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

 

 

This book is a nice collection of facts and statistics about the great Yankee teams of the 20th Century. It contains nice pictures and anecdotes about the Yankee greats including Ruth, Gehrig, Ford, DiMaggio, Ruffing, Mantle, Maris, Jackson, Berra and Stengel. There are also many short descriptions about famous and crucial games.

It is very easy reading, but don't expect to read a story. It is more like a book of facts, one liners and anecdotes. It also provides coverage of the present team that has dominated baseball since 1996 with four World Championships in five years. It appears to be very accurate. I found only a few typos. One that I caught was on page 176 where they list all the Yankees that had their uniform number retired. For number 23 they list Don Mattingly as an outfielder even though he played almost his entire career as a first baseman. I was a little surprised to see that the first championship wasn't until 1923 and that in the era of Ruth they won only four and lost three World Series from 1921 to 1932.

My memories are of the Yankees of the 1950s and early 1960s the teams I grew up rooting for from age 6 until adulthood. From 1949 to 1964 the Yankees only missed out on two World Series (1954 when Cleveland won the American League Pennant and 1959 when Chicago won the American League Pennant, both times Al Lopez was the manager that topped Casey). In the other 13 years the Yankees appeared in the World Series and won 8 and only lost 5.

As a child I took it for granted that they would be in the series. But in 1965 when CBS bought the Yankees it stopped for 11 years until Steinbrenner came along and brought them back in 1976. It is a great reference that any true Yankee fan would want to keep.