| Summary: | "Mr. Tofel's re-creation of the 1939 Yankee season makes a strong claim that the Yankees that year may have been the greatest team in baseball history. With Babe Ruth having retired but Lou Gehrig still in his prime, the Yankees in 1939 won their fourth consecutive World Series - and forever established the Yankee legend. The season itself was remarkable."
"Mr. Tofel's original work of history anchors the game in the context of American life at the end of a decade of troubles. He notices the fine points: how a fan could get a ticket for a World Series game just by walking up to the box office in October, and how that game would be played in the daytime. And his narrative includes a good many findings that are usually overlooked - for example, that players in 1939 were actually very well paid; that as Gehrig's health deteriorated, manager Joe McCarthy pressed him to end his consecutive game streak; that baseball segregation in 1939 was not so much a Jim Crow system but simply out of mind in an atmosphere of casual bigotry; that Joe McCarthy was probably the greatest manager in baseball history; and why."
"A Legend in the Making captures the small moments of the 1939 season as well as the great plays and great triumphs. Baseball fans will find it one of the most interesting and revealing baseball books of our time."--Jacket.
|
|---|
