Breaks of the Game...
Looking for things to do on an off-day in the NYC is not a very difficult task, but I do have to admit that it was for me on Wednesday..I'm not used to Wednesdays as an off-day, so I turned to TimeOut NY to see what's up...
Eerily, I opened the mag right up to the 'Around Town' Section where I found a clip that advertised a public reading by David Halberstam of his new book "The Teammates" at Borders Bookstore at the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle.
So, I jumped on the two wheels, and I broke up a sweat pedaling up 8th Ave. to 59th St. Halberstam opened up the session with information on the research and the interviews that he completed for the book. The audience contained about fifteen people, which made it a very intimate setting for a reading.
Halbersatam's 'The Teammates' is about growth that occured in the relationships between Boston Red Sox teammates Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, Bobby Doerr, and Dom DiMaggio from the late forties until the present time. The story foretells the lives of the the four as they lean on each other in the final stages of life, and how they developed as individuals within their relationships with one another after their playing careers.
Most importantly, Halberstam said that he wanted to tell the story about how players deal with the passage from a national icon to their dealings with the invulnerabilites that come with age. He went over each character and their times with the Red Sox...In particluar, I did not know that Ted Williams leaned upon Johnny Pesky an incredible amount in his last days...
One of the conversations that Halberstam brought up between Williams and Pesky displays to the reader that heroes suffer from the same frailities of life that everyone else shares and will share later in life. At the time Williams was having a very difficult time after one of his several strokes, and he asked Pesky "Why?...Why do we have to go through all this pain at the end of our lives?...This should never be happening to us."
Pesky replied. "Ted, we've had a very good run. There's not a lot of people that have lived like we have. Right now, we're like anyone else in life. These cards that we have now are what's been dealt with us...Just the same way those cards we're dealt to us when we were younger...We have had a pretty special life."
Halberstam made a telling point to a fan, who asked whether or not Halberstam pulled from his experiences from VietNam to tell the story of teammates in battle, and whether or not we will see teammates again. Halberstam said he did pull some things together to analyze the way people lean on each other in battle, and he also answered the question of whether or not teammates will ever be that close again with a "No".
His belief is that before free agency in all sports was available to players, each team member had to rely on the other for support. Not only had most of the players had come up through the same farm systems and stayed with the same team for throughout their playing careers, but they also were playing for very small wages that made them more dependent upon each other and the community.
Personally, I thought that was a great point....
Even though I hate the Red Sox, and even though I've read a ton about the "Splendid Splinter" over the last year, I picked up a copy. I had Halberstam sign it for me. The guy's work is incredible, and I told him tha "Breaks of the Game" and "Playing for Keeps" are in my top 5 basketball bookds of all time.
When I told him that I went to Carolina, he said that "you have a great guy as the head coach. He ( UNC Coach Roy Williams) is an incredible guy." He also said that Carolina was going to have a terrible time beating Duke because of the "significant problems that Carolina had in the past."
(I almost said that's why he's an expert on the past because a guy on the 'street' would know that Carolina is inching past Duke in the recruiting level. Carolina passed Duke on the "street" in recruiting last year. The ripple effect usually takes two years to show...Believe me...I would like to see what he has to say by the end of this summer.)
However, I am in perspective. For me to say something to a guy who wrote probably the best piece of sportswriting ever with "The Breaks of the Game" and who won the Pulitzer Prize at the age of thirty, would be like Charlie Criss "bogarting" Bill Russell. So, I'm just happy that I could watch how he carries himself, which is very professional.
His advice was very simple...."Keep working hard"...So, I'm going to keep it going, and I'll let you know what I think of "The Teammates" in the future. He did state that he may be working on a book about the 1958 NFL Championship Game between the Colts and Giants, but he wasn't sure how much interest there would be behind it.
I have a big day on the floor tomorrow...Oh yeah, I'm working on the floor at the new Ralph Lauren store in the West Village. If you're in the NYC, stop on by and we'll talk hoops and life. I'll have more on the Halberstam encounter in an upcoming article at TarheelDaily.com I think you'll enjoy the piece...
"Playing for Keeps",
BD
Eerily, I opened the mag right up to the 'Around Town' Section where I found a clip that advertised a public reading by David Halberstam of his new book "The Teammates" at Borders Bookstore at the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle.
So, I jumped on the two wheels, and I broke up a sweat pedaling up 8th Ave. to 59th St. Halberstam opened up the session with information on the research and the interviews that he completed for the book. The audience contained about fifteen people, which made it a very intimate setting for a reading.
Halbersatam's 'The Teammates' is about growth that occured in the relationships between Boston Red Sox teammates Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, Bobby Doerr, and Dom DiMaggio from the late forties until the present time. The story foretells the lives of the the four as they lean on each other in the final stages of life, and how they developed as individuals within their relationships with one another after their playing careers.
Most importantly, Halberstam said that he wanted to tell the story about how players deal with the passage from a national icon to their dealings with the invulnerabilites that come with age. He went over each character and their times with the Red Sox...In particluar, I did not know that Ted Williams leaned upon Johnny Pesky an incredible amount in his last days...
One of the conversations that Halberstam brought up between Williams and Pesky displays to the reader that heroes suffer from the same frailities of life that everyone else shares and will share later in life. At the time Williams was having a very difficult time after one of his several strokes, and he asked Pesky "Why?...Why do we have to go through all this pain at the end of our lives?...This should never be happening to us."
Pesky replied. "Ted, we've had a very good run. There's not a lot of people that have lived like we have. Right now, we're like anyone else in life. These cards that we have now are what's been dealt with us...Just the same way those cards we're dealt to us when we were younger...We have had a pretty special life."
Halberstam made a telling point to a fan, who asked whether or not Halberstam pulled from his experiences from VietNam to tell the story of teammates in battle, and whether or not we will see teammates again. Halberstam said he did pull some things together to analyze the way people lean on each other in battle, and he also answered the question of whether or not teammates will ever be that close again with a "No".
His belief is that before free agency in all sports was available to players, each team member had to rely on the other for support. Not only had most of the players had come up through the same farm systems and stayed with the same team for throughout their playing careers, but they also were playing for very small wages that made them more dependent upon each other and the community.
Personally, I thought that was a great point....
Even though I hate the Red Sox, and even though I've read a ton about the "Splendid Splinter" over the last year, I picked up a copy. I had Halberstam sign it for me. The guy's work is incredible, and I told him tha "Breaks of the Game" and "Playing for Keeps" are in my top 5 basketball bookds of all time.
When I told him that I went to Carolina, he said that "you have a great guy as the head coach. He ( UNC Coach Roy Williams) is an incredible guy." He also said that Carolina was going to have a terrible time beating Duke because of the "significant problems that Carolina had in the past."
(I almost said that's why he's an expert on the past because a guy on the 'street' would know that Carolina is inching past Duke in the recruiting level. Carolina passed Duke on the "street" in recruiting last year. The ripple effect usually takes two years to show...Believe me...I would like to see what he has to say by the end of this summer.)
However, I am in perspective. For me to say something to a guy who wrote probably the best piece of sportswriting ever with "The Breaks of the Game" and who won the Pulitzer Prize at the age of thirty, would be like Charlie Criss "bogarting" Bill Russell. So, I'm just happy that I could watch how he carries himself, which is very professional.
His advice was very simple...."Keep working hard"...So, I'm going to keep it going, and I'll let you know what I think of "The Teammates" in the future. He did state that he may be working on a book about the 1958 NFL Championship Game between the Colts and Giants, but he wasn't sure how much interest there would be behind it.
I have a big day on the floor tomorrow...Oh yeah, I'm working on the floor at the new Ralph Lauren store in the West Village. If you're in the NYC, stop on by and we'll talk hoops and life. I'll have more on the Halberstam encounter in an upcoming article at TarheelDaily.com I think you'll enjoy the piece...
"Playing for Keeps",
BD
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