Review of "The New York Yankees of the 1950's"

The decade of the 1950's is considered to be the Golden Age of baseball, especially in New York City as the city was blessed to have three competitive, exciting teams during most of that decade.  One, the Yankees, dominated the sport like no one else has for a decade and this book tells about the team during that time. 

Title/Author:

“The New York Yankees of the 1950s – Mantle, Stengel, Berra and a Decade of Dominance” by David Fischer

 

Tags:
Baseball, history, championship, Yankees

Publish date:

April 1, 2019

Length:

280 pages

Rating: 

3 ½  of 5 stars (good)

Review:

During the decade of the 1950’s, the New York Yankees had an incredible run of success.  They won the World Series for the first four years of the decade as part of a streak of five consecutive championship seasons.  Then they followed up with four more American League pennants and two more World Series championships in 1956 and 1958.  This amazing decade of baseball in the Bronx is the subject of this book by David Fischer. Using numerous sources for his research such as newspaper articles and other books, Fischer relives each year of Yankees baseball and shares some anecdotes about the star players.  These include players whose careers peaked earlier and ended in the 1950’s (Joe DiMaggio), those who began play in the 1950’s and continued (Mickey Mantle) or those who just began later in the decade (Elston Howard).  While the writing is not greatly detailed or insightful, a reader will learn much about the players and manager Casey Stengel.   As like any other book that describes a team or athlete during a certain time frame, this book will make references to important social or political events during that time. The topics are varied, such as television, cars, civil rights and President Eisenhower. Sometimes these are smoothly woven into the baseball text and at other times, they seem to be added simply because they occurred during the year that the exploits of the Yankees are currently being discussed.   If a reader is a very knowledgeable, well-versed Yankee fan or historian, then he or she may already know about most of the material in this book.  If the reader is a casual fan or is just interested in learning why New York was the dominant baseball team of the 1950’s then this book is for them.    I wish to thank Lyons Press for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.Excellent basketball memoir Usually a sports memoir will follow the same pattern. An ex-athlete will talk about his childhood, his career while playing his chosen game and his life after retiring. While some of this is true for Metta World Peace (formerly known as Ron Artest), his story takes on extra meaning because of his willingness to talk about his mental health issues so candidly. He does verify some of his more off beat moments, such as working at Circuit City while still a player. He does

 

Book Format Read:
E-book (Kindle)

Buying Links:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1493038923/ref=x_gr_w_bb?ie=UTF8&tag=x_gr_w_bb-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1493038923&SubscriptionId=1MGPYB6YW3HWK55XCGG2