Review of "The Heyday of Willie, Duke and Mickey"

The return of baseball season means I'll be attending games.  My preferred method of transportation for these trips is either a train or a bus, meaning more reading time. Here is my review of this book I read on a recent trip to Yankee Stadium. 

Title/Author:

“The Heyday of Willie, Duke and Mickey: New York City Baseball’s Golden Age Amid Integration” by Robert C. Cottrell

Rating: 

3 of 5 stars (good)

Review:

After World War II ended, major league baseball went through a period of great change as it integrated Black players into the game.  It also went through a period of dominance by New York teams as at least one of the three New York City teams – New York Yankees, New York Giants or Brooklyn Dodgers – appeared in the World Series in 9 of the 11 years between 1947 and 1957.  This period of baseball history is chronicled in this book by Robert C. Cottrell.

Cottrell covers this from two views – one from on the field with good recaps of the seasons for each of the three New York teams.  He also provides readers with the progress of integration of the major leagues. Of course, he starts with Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers, but he does an admirable job of informing the reader of the progress made by other clubs as well. This also includes the lack of progress of integration on some clubs, most notably the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.

One thing to note is that if a reader has read other books on either topic, there probably won’t be much new material that they have not already read.  This book gives a good overview of these items.  The sections with the most detail are those that talk about the pennant races and World Series matchups involving one of the three teams.

Something that did catch me by surprise was the title did not seem to really be the right one for the book.  While each of those three Hall of Fame center fielders did get a good amount of text, it felt like the subtitle would have made the better title.  For the record and for those who were not familiar with the names, they were Willie Mays of the Giants, Duke Snider of the Dodgers and Mickey Mantle for the Yankees.

Overall, this was a decent book and one that was fine for passing the time on a train ride to Yankee Stadium for a ball game.  It is best suited for those readers who were not already familiar with this golden age of New York City baseball.

I wish to thank Bloomsbury Academic for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are strictly my own.

Link: Amazon.com: Heyday of Willie, Duke, and Mickey, The: New York City Baseball's Golden Age amid Integration: 9798881842574: Cottrell, Robert C.: Books