'Pure gold...a sweetheart of a book' - Red Smith, "New York Times". 'For anyone who was a baseball fan any time from the mid-nineteenth twenties until the mid-fifties - anyone with the slightest susceptibility to nostalgia for the Good Old Days - [these] voices will provide a bath of pure pleasure' - "New York Times". 'A nostalgic masterpiece...one of the finest books ever written about any sport' - "Chicago Sun-Times". 'To be consulted again and again...a fine book, one to keep and relish' - "New Republic". 'The anecdotes are simply splendid. If you read but one baseball book this season, make it this one' - "Library Journal".Donald Honig crossed the country to meet and interview former big-league ball players. They shared their memories with him and the result is a book packed with nostalgia, statistics, action, revelations - an extraordinary oral history of baseball in the halcyon days between the two world wars.
Babe Ruth, Lefty Grove, Ted Williams, Bob Feller, Dizzy Dean, Jackie Robinson, Lou Gehrig, and many others are brought to life through the recollections of Wes Ferrell, Charlie Gehringer, Elbie Fletcher, Bucky Waters, Billy Herman, Cool Papa Bell, Spud Chandler, Pete Reiser, and a host of others. Those were the days when the grass was real, salaries were modest, Bob Feller was America's most famous seventeen-year-old, and idealism was in full swing.'Baseball builds your pride', said pitcher Wes Ferrell, who played it in order 'to be a better guy'. Donald Honig is a former professional ball player and a novelist. "Baseball between the Lines: Baseball in the Forties and Fifties", "Man in the Dugout: Fifteen Big League Managers Speak Their Minds", and "October Heroes: Great World Series Games Remembered by the Men Who Played Them" are all available in Bison Books editions.
- ISBN10 0803272677
- ISBN13 9780803272675
- Publish Date 1 September 1993 (first published 12 June 1975)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 26 January 2010
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Nebraska Press
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 326
- Language English