I wonder how many of the old stars featured in this delightful book bought into its somewhat romantic title. Included in this, the second volume of the Baseball Oral History Project, are Ralph Branca, Bill Rigney, Duke Snider, Robin Roberts, Carl Erskine, Whitey Ford, Lew Burdette, Harmon Killebrew, Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, and Billy Williams. Some of these players have familiar (to me, that is) stories, others not so much. All are told in their own words, which makes for interesting reading. Pitcher Lew Burdette explains how he and teammate Warren Spahn decided that "if you get the reputation that you don't walk anybody, like Greg Maddux does, you don't have to throw strikes. They swing at anything." Whitey Ford recounts a story about sitting with Mickey Mantle in the Mick's high-priced Manhattan restaurant and watching a woman come in with four kids for hamburgers. Mantle says to Ford that she's going to be shocked when the bill comes, and sure enough, when it did, the woman was visibly taken aback. At which point, Mantle went over to the table, announced that they were the 10,00th customer and the tab was on the house.I don't know if interviewer Fay Vincent asked about Jackie Robinson but Robinson features large in many reminiscences, for what he meant to baseball and beyond. Carl Erskine, who in 1960 had a child born with Downs syndrome, provides some of the most poignant comments. It was thanks to Jackie Robinson, he says, that children like his, now have far different lives than in the past. Robinson, he says, was responsible for changing American society from "rejection to inclusion, from spectator to participant." A good book, a good series: check it out.
