Fifth Season: Tales of My Life in Baseball

By Donald Honig, Donald Honing, Xio Axelrod

Book Overview

"If you were much of a boy growing up in the Maspeth section of Queens in the late 1930s and 1940s, you had the baseball fever. It seemed contagious, but it struck mostly from within. . . . Often, in later years, when I was writing a long series of books on the game, some well-intended philistine would ask to have explained to him the fascination with baseball. I offered my stock answer: 'If you have to ask the question, you'll never understand the answer.'" With this small confession Donald Honig begins his charming memoir of a life devoted to the charms of baseball, including the many great figures of the game he has known in the past half-century.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566638100
• ISBN13: 9781566638104
• Release Date: February 2009
• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 1.23 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Baseball fans and collections catering to them will relish this lively, fun account of the sport

Baseball historian Donald Honig provides a vivid account of the sport and blends in an autobiography of his life and experience as a baseball writer over the past half-century. At sixteen he was signed to a minor league contract by the Boston Red Sox - he had a short career and went on to become a successful baseball writer. Baseball fans and collections catering to them will relish this lively, fun account of the sport and the author's relationships with it.

RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "YESTERDAY IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS TODAY... IN BASEBALL... AND IN LIFE."

Once in a great... great... while... you pick up a baseball book figuring you're going to read simply about balls and strikes... hits and outs... presented in the normal everyday parlance of baseball broadcasters and sportswriters... but... then unexpectedly... your entire being... is ambushed by writing that is one part poetry... one part statistics... one part historical remembrances... of a families immigration to the United States fleeing war torn Europe that was flooded with pogrom's... where "a Jew was less than dirt". Interwoven seamlessly throughout are a boy's dreams and love affair with baseball. Most notably the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1930's and 40's. The author's memoirs are written with such a pure love and adulation towards the game of baseball that the reader would not be surprised if there was a symphony orchestra scoring each beautifully detailed sentence... paragraph... and page. The feeling that envelopes you... is that this is the baseball version of Hemingway's "Adventures Of A Young Man". When the author's Father takes him and his brother to their first Dodger game at Ebbets Field you can just imagine the wide-eyed excitement of the boys finally seeing their hero's in the flesh. "DOLPH CAMILLI, THE LEAGUES MOST VALUABLE PLAYER THAT YEAR, WAS ON FIRST BASE, BILLY HERMAN, NEWLY ACQUIRED FROM THE CUBS AND A FUTURE HALL OF FAMER, PLAYED SECOND. AT SHORTSTOP WAS YOUNG, BABY-FACED PEE WEE REESE, ALSO TO GO INTO THE HALL OF FAME. THE STEADY COOKIE LAVAGETTO WAS THE THIRD BASEMAN. THE SURLY, HARD-HITTING JOE MEDWICK WAS IN LEFT FIELD. IN CENTER FIELD WAS MY SOON-TO-BE-FAVORITE PLAYER, THE YOUTHFUL PETE REISER, THAT YEAR'S LEAGUE BATTING CHAMPION, WHOSE INCREDIBLE RUN OF INJURIES ABORTED WHAT WOULD SURELY HAVE BEEN A HALL OF FAME CAREER (THAT DAY, IN FACT, HE RAN INTO AN OUTFIELD GATE AND HAD TO LEAVE THE GAME A FEW INNINGS LATER). THE POPULAR DIXIE WALKER WAS IN RIGHT FIELD. RIGHT-HANDER LUKE HAMLIN WAS THE STARTING PITCHER. IN THE DUGOUT SAT THE ABRASIVE, MEGAPHONE-VOICED LEO DUROCHER, WHO THAT YEAR WOULD SKIPPER THE TEAM TO ITS FIRST PENNANT IN TWENTY-ONE YEARS." Note: The author failed to mention that Joe Medwick was also a future Hall Of Famer... and I only mention that because "Ducky" Medwick was my Mother's favorite Dodger when he was on the team. The date of the boy's first Dodger game? May 8, 1941 my dearly departed Dodger-loving Mother's birthday. The author (Donald Honig) dreamed of one day playing on this hallowed field... and in fact was signed to a big league contract by the Boston Red Sox as a sixteen-year-old pitcher. Honig grows up quickly as he is not only cut from his first minor league team... but captures the heartbreak and uncompromising jolt of reality that ninety-nine-percent of all young ballplayers face... when the great Hall Of Fame flame-throwing superstar Bob Feller warms up next to him... and the author poetically paints an unflinching portrait of a young boy/man realizing for the first time that