Title/Author:
“Summer of
’68: The Season That Changed Baseball, and America, Forever” by Tim Wendel
Tags:
Baseball, history,
Tigers, Cardinals
Publish date:
March 12, 2013
Rating:
4 of 5
stars (very good)
Review:
1968 was a
tumultuous year in America. The Vietnam
War was becoming unwinnable and many young men were dying in the jungles of
that far-off land. Riots and civil
unrest was far too often a staple on the nightly news. Two prominent leaders were assassinated.
Riots marred the Democratic Convention of 1968.
But through it all, the American Pastime of baseball was still being
played. However, even the game that
would supposedly take people’s minds off the news for a few hours had its own
turbulence that season and was intertwined with some of the news.
This all
comes together in this interesting book by Tim Wendel as he collected stories
and interviews from many players and managers of that season. He concentrated on the two teams that would
end up playing each other in the World Series, the Detroit Tigers and the St.
Louis Cardinals. It is also fitting that
a pitcher on each team would win the Cy Young Award and Most Valuable Player for
each league, Bob Gibson of the Cardinals and Denny McClain for the Tigers.
After all, 1968 was the “Year of the Pitcher” which is stated many times in the
book. Gibson set the record for the
lowest earned run average in the modern era of 1.12 and McClain won 31 games,
the last pitcher who has won 30 games.
Of course,
other teams were part of the book, but Wendel concentrates on these two and it
works out well. Where some of the other teams are mentioned is when there is a
major event that took place and baseball was somehow involved. One such incident was the handling of
cancellation or non-cancellation of games following the assassination of Robert
Kennedy. Wendel takes the reader back
to the commissioner’s office and the confusion about who can cancel games and
who has to play. Some players and one
team, the New York Mets, refuse to play in the aftermath of the tragedy. One of the players who refused to play, Milt
Pappas of the Cincinnati Reds, ended up being traded three days following his
refusal. Events like this are well
chronicled in this book.
I found
two minor issues with the book. One was
that there were a few typos missed in the editing process. They didn’t affect my enjoyment of the book
too much, but were still noticeable. The
other part that took me by surprise was the amount of words written about
football. This was about the time when football
was about to surpass baseball as the most popular spectator sport in American,
and the amount of stories written about that game in a baseball book seemed to
illustrate that.
Nonetheless, I found this an entertaining and easy-to-read book that any baseball fan interested in the game during that time frame will enjoy.
Did I skim?
No, every
story was quite interesting
Pace of the book:
It was a
fast moving book with the politics and football talk woven into the baseball
stories quite well.
Do I recommend?
All
baseball fans who are interested in baseball history during that time will
enjoy this recap of that season before major changes took place.
Book Format Read:
Hardcover
Buying links:
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