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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable Baseball History, February 2, 2002
By A Customer
In his introduction the Richard Tofel notes the inspiration he drew from Richard Reeves's work on President Kennedy and David Herbert Donald's biography of Abraham Lincoln. The result of that inspiration is obvious. As you read Tofel's description of the progress of the '39 Yankees you feel as though you are there, living right along as the season winds to its foregone conclusion. In fact, it is only the inevitability of the Yankee victory, a runaway from the start, that occasionally slows the narrative. But that is not Tofel's fault. He more than makes up for the absence of a pennant race with several rich character portaits, partcularly of McCarthy and Gehrig. The sad recounting of the end of Gehrig's career, including a wonderful recreation of the day that Gehrig gave his "luckiest man on the face of the Earth" speech is alone worth the purchase price.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
good, hardly great, treatment of pinstripe pride and prowess, June 18, 2002
Richard Tofel's capable treatment of the dominant 1939 New York Yankees is much like reading a solid sports column about the previous day's game. "A Legend in the Making" is factual, interesting and engaging, but it is also unmemorable, cliche-ridden and intolerably nonanalytical. Although Tofel writes with a crisp style and salts his observations with vital facts and otherwise esoteric information, "Legend" fails to pesuade the reader as to why this particular Yankee club was the progenitor to the idea of dynastic domination of the sport. In certain respects, Tofel set an impossible task for himself. At the onset, the reader knows that the Yankees dominated the American League in 1939, the pennant race being over, seemingly, by mid-July; the club swept Cincinnati in the World Series. By winning its fourth consecutive World Series, the Yankees achieved a height no other club had reached. Tofel cannot create any tension or anticipation in his description of the season; his drawn-out account of the World Series lacks drama. Since the reader already knows the outcome of both the season and the Series, Tofel must present an argument as to why this particular club deserves a book-length treatment. In this respect, "Legend" is simply not successful. The 1939 Yankees were very much an "ensemble" ballclub. Aside from the emergence of Joe DiMaggio as the centerpiece of the team, the Yankees featured strong performances from players whom they had cultivated from their farm system. Tofel tantalizes us with useful data about the successful performances of '39 Yankees who emerged from the system but fails to discuss how and why the Yankee farm system emerged as superior to the other clubs in the American League. Nor does Tofel spend any significant time comparing the '39 Yankees with the storied '27 Yanks. If the '39 Yankee team is "legendary," why is its most signifcant and enduring memory Lou Gehrig: his consecutive-streak ending, his diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and his wrenching "Luckiest Man Alive" speech? Given manager Joe McCarthy's pivotal presence in the dugout does Tofel spend no time comparing his strategies (driving his players mercilessly, insisting on absolute perfection, playing his hunches with his pitching staff) with those of other American League managers? Tofel himself admits that many of the players on that fine team had "czreer years;" that admission alone weakens his argument that this particular club was legendary. "A Legend in the Making" is not without its strengths however. Tofel is superb in shedding light on the McCarthy-Gehrig confrontation over the Iron Horse's consecutive game streak; his description of Gehrig's physical and emotional state during the July 4th tribute is profoundly moving. The author's research sheds light on the terrible care players received when hurt; that the '39 Yankees performed so brilliantly with so many of its key players nursing debilitating inujries attests to the resolve of the players. Joe McCarthy's contribtions to the success of this team are capably described; to a generation of young boys who have no idea what it means to "dress like a Yankee," Tofel's admiration of the skipper is refreshing. Perceptive biographical sketches abound and truly serve as the backbone of the book. Despite these strengths, "A Legend in the Making" does not deliver in the clutch. Avoiding responsibility for analyzing, for truly explaining his central thesis, Richard Tofel instead writes exactly as he describes himself, "a fan who finds himself back in 1939." The men who wore the pinstripes and those of us who love the national sport deserve better than that.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Supremacy with Uncommon Style and Grace, May 13, 2002
Up front, I acknowledge that I have been a lifelong baseball fan. Growing up in South Chicago, I saved every penny I could from paper routes, caddying, setting pins at the local bowling alley (which, yes, dates me), cutting lawns, washing cars, and stocking the shelves of the local grocery inorder to afford going to as many Cubs and White Sox games as my funds allowed. Otherwise, I listened to radio broadcasts of home and away games. Our family was the first in the neighborhood to have a television set; I could then watch the games with my grandmother, another diehard baseball fan. She loved the Cubs, endured the White Sox, and shared my excitement when World Series games were televised. So much for where I have been and still come from. Today, for various reasons, I have much less interest in Major League baseball.Also up front, I want to say that I thoroughly enjoyed Tofel's account of the Yankees' 1939 season. It is exceptionally well-written. True, thanks to several dozen books I have already read, I already knew much of what he shares in this volume. Even so, he enabled me to return to a very special season in the history of Major League baseball, one during which there were so many transitions occurring. For example, Lou Gehrig was deteriorating (dying, in fact) while Joe DiMaggio was taking his rightful place as one of the greatest Yankees among so many outstanding players. The book follows an obvious but appropriate format: Pre-Game Warm-Up, followed by one chapter per each of nine Innings, then a Post-Game Report. Along the way, Tofel focuses on the key players and on the key games with the Yankees' strongest competitors. Along the way, when not recounting action on the field, Tofel pauses to discuss -- with sensitivity as well as insight -- human relationships which were neither revealed nor acknowledged until many years alter. Some have challenged Tofel's use of the word" pure" but I do not. I think he means that the quality of play in combination with the professionalism of the players "between the lines" invested that Yankee team with a certain purity of deportment. Of course, at that time, players were literally owned by the teams which employed them. True, the color barrier would not be overcome until eight years later (1947), about the same time the U.S. military services were finally integrated. It was not until 1954 that the U.S. Supreme Court declared school segregation constitutionally illegal. Then and now, our society was not perfect and Tofel nowhere suggests otherwise. Given all that, the 1939 Yankees handled themselves with uncommon style and grace...with a self-assurance many then viewed as arrogance. Nonetheless, even today, when wearing the pinstripes and playing in Yankee Stadium as a Yankee for the first time, veteran players such as Jason Giambi say that they get goose bumps and feel lightheaded. Until 1939, that was probably not true. After they won the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds, the players' brief celebration in the clubhouse was cut short by manager Joe McCarthy: "Cut that out! What are you, a lot of amateurs? I thought I was managing a professional club. Why, you're worse than college guys." The chastised players then listened silently and intently as McCarthy shared his thoughts about "lost games they might have won during the championship season." For whatever it may be worth, the only other books on baseball which I enjoyed reading as much as this one are Red Smith on Baseball and Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer. Now if only the Cubs or the White Sox could win a World Series....
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by Tom Adelman
