The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship (review)

minor figures who flit in and out of view, creating a world that feels as densely populated and interconnected as a Dickens novel. Robert Lowell, Joan Baez, the Dalai Lama, Czeslaw Milosz, Robert Giroux, Shelby Foote, John Kennedy Toole, D. T. Suzuki, and Pope John Paul ?, all make appearances here. It is, Elie suggests, a literary movement that extends beyond the scope of these four writers. If there are any limitations to Elie's book, one might be that the somewhat democratic process of dividing the chapters into equal sections for each writer doesn't always satisfy. At times Merton, the most prolific of the group, nearly overwhelms the book. Still, The Life You Save May Be Your Own is successful—intelligently written , with all the visual grace and sensibility ofa good novel. In attempting to render a literary movement built upon the mysteries of faith, Elie has written an important book that reads like an ordinary one, plainly stated, with a shimmer of greatness. (AV) The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship by David Halberstam Hyperion, 2003, 217 pp., $22.95 The Teammates, David Halberstam 's newest book on American sports, is an account of four Boston Red Sox teammates: Dom DiMaggio, Bobby Doerr, Johnny Pesky and Ted Williams. The four came to the major leagues together and anchored the talented Red Sox teams of the 1940s, when baseball was America's true pastime, the pitching mound was five inches higher and St. Louis was the westernmost and southernmost city to have a major league team. Halberstam's book was inspired by a trip Pesky and DiMaggio made in October 2001 to visit Williams, ill and homebound in Florida (because he was caring for his sick wife, Doerr was unable to make the trip). The Teammates recounts the early lives of the four players, the evolution of their friendships, their successful, though heartbreaking, careers in Red Sox uniforms, and their transitions into life after baseball. The Rorida pilgrimage may have been the springboard for Halberstam 's book, but precious little narrative is dedicated to the trip, made by car from Boston. Only one chapter —ten pages—is given to depicting the reunion, which is described in an understated and poignant manner. The book's subtitle, "A Portrait of a Friendship," might lead readers to expect a profound exploration of the nature of friendship. At the least, one might anticipate an account of the strong bonds among four teammates . But the friendships will strike most readers as pretty mundane. In fact, we seldom see all four friends together. Halberstam is most successful in weaving the stories of the Red Sox teammates into the fabric of midcentury American life. The Teammates is about baseball, but it provides snapshots into the lives of immigrant families—Pesky is the son ofCroatians; DiMaggio, Italians. It shows talented baseball players willing to pause in their athletic careers to serve their country during World War ? and the Korean conflict. Playing in an era when team owners controlled the game and athlete salaries were in 180 · The Missouri Review the tens of thousands—Pesky^s highest salary was $22,500—the four Red Sox players provide a sharp contrast to today's cocky athlete millionaires. In the 1940s, major league players often maintained other jobs in the off-season, and it was rare that a player left baseball for full-blown retirement. Pesky, a player-turnedcoach -and-Boston-broadcaster, and DiMaggio, who founded and ran a successful upholstery manufacturing company, were typical in their after-baseball careers. Told in crisp prose without sports jargon and enlivened by generous quotations from the subjects, the narrative offers an insider's view of four men and their successful runs in the major leagues. For Pesky and DiMaggio (the younger brother of Yankee Hall of FamerJoe DiMaggio), success came despite long odds. Pesky was small—5'9", 168pounds—andDiMaggio was plagued by poor eyesight. Halberstam provides plenty of interesting nuggets for baseball junkies , from stories about spit-ball hurlers to theories on hitting advanced by Williams, the last player to bat .400. We learn that years after sending Babe Ruth to the rival Yankees, the Red Sox passed on an opportunity...