Timothy M. GayReseñas

Timothy Gray's, Assignment to Hell: The War Against Nazi Germany With Correspondents Walter Cronkite, Andy Rooney. A.J. Liebling, Homer Bigart, and Hal Boyle is a profoundly interesting book not just on the war but on some of the leading journalists who covered it.

Going in, I've already read 2 books on Edward R. Murrow and an extremely well written biography on Walter Cronkite and aware of Andy Rooney having watched him on 60 minutes my whole life but must admit to being unaware of his service as an enlisted correspondent for Stars and Stripes in World War II as well as all the other journalists mentioned.

To see another side of World War Ii was fascinating to hear of the trials and tribulations of but a small group of were responsible for bringing the news of the war to the home front. The preponderance of the book is spent on the European theater briefly touching on the Pacific and following up with a brief description of their post-war career.

I rate this as a solid 4-star book and encourage those interested in World War II to look at a non typical coverage of the war.

Another of the many engaging stories that don't get mainstream written or TV coverage but make for compelling reading.

Barnstorming was a way of life for professional baseball players in the 30’s and 40’s. Pay was not good, especially for players in the minors as well as Negro League players. With major portions of the country lacking a major league baseball team, barnstorming gave the fans a way to see baseball greats in action. There was no color bar in barnstorming – fans both black and white wanted to see their favorites go against the best players in the other leagues. In Satch, Dizzy & Rapid Robert : the wild saga of interracial baseball before Jackie Robinson, baseball scholar Timothy Gay covers the barnstorming exploits of pitchers Satchel Paige, Dizzy Dean, and Robert Feller along with a large supporting cast including Negro League greats Buck O’Neill, Monty Irvin and Judy Johnson to the DiMaggios, Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson. The war years include teams that played in the armed services, with many anecdotes of major and Negro League servicemen. As far as I can tell, this is the only book that covers interracial barnstorming in this time period along with a serious look at the racially integrated California Winter League (in existence for decades in the early part of the twentieth century.)

Gay’s book is written as scholarship and is heavily footnoted. There is an excellent bibliography and index along with statistics showing the Paige/Dean and Paige/Feller match-ups. Although the illustrations show many photos of Satch, the Dean brothers and Bob Feller, there are also photos of lesser known players.

The book can be dry reading with its plethora of facts but it is worthwhile noting that many major, minor and Negro leaguers played against each other years before Jackie Robinson would integrate the majors with results that can surprise the reader.½

Tris Speaker has been nearly forgotten by all but the baseball literati, but the author makes a very convincing case that he was a better outfielder than Joe DiMaggio, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Roberto Clemente, perhaps any of them save Willie Mays. He hailed from Texas, was a KKK member early in life but was able to grow and evolve to the point of one day tutoring Larry Doby, the AL's first black player. He had a career batting average of .345 (4th all-time) and ranks first in doubles hit. But he was even more renowned for his fielding, still holding career records for assists, double plays and unassisted double plays by an outfielder (this was because his uncanny sense of where the hit ball would go allowed him to play an extremely shallow center field. It was his glove that was known as the place "where triples go to die", although that saying was later somehow switched to Shoeless Joe Jackson. He was also a consummate base runner and stolen base man. He led the Boston Red Sox to two World Championships. Then when a gambling scandal sent him to Cleveland, he led the Indians as a player-manager to their first World Championship. He had many flaws as a human being (although he was a much better man than Ty Cobb), but his virtues were also many. The author does a fine job of humanizing an early baseball superstar whom I had barely heard of.

It's a question that's dogged baseball fans for nearly 150 years – Who's the greatest center fielder? There have been many center fielders who have been merely outstanding, from Mantle to Mays to Griffey Jr., but there is probably only one true answer to whom is the greatest: Tris Speaker.

As one-third of one of the most talented outfields – Speaker, Hooper, and Lewis – this side of Murderer's Row, Speaker was truly a five-tool player: he hit for average, he hit for power, he was speedy, he was one of the best defensive center fielders, if not the best, and he had a cannon for an arm. He was also one of the most intelligent–and notorious–players in the game.

And he was a champion. He grew up professionally as part of the excellent Red Sox teams of the early 1900s, and after he was traded at the height of his prime to Cleveland, he led the Indians to another championship in 1920.

But telling the story of Tris Speaker means you have to tell the good with the bad: early in life Speaker was a member of the KKK. There is also convincing circumstantial evidence that he, along with Ty Cobb and Joe Wood, bet on major league baseball games. Gay's biography goes into these episodes in great detail, delivering the full measure of the man.

So why is Speaker important? A biography as rich and detailed as Gay's is important because Speaker was a product of his time, and yet his talent, though largely forgotten, is and will always be timeless.

A baseball history book centering mostly on the years prior to Jackie Robinson's debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers as the first black ballplayer in the modern major leagues. This tells the story of Dizzy Dean, Satchel Paige and Bob Feller, and how they discovered that not only was "barnstorming" (baseball competitions/exhibitions in the offseason, mostly to rural areas) a lucrative supplement to their incomes, but that fan interest was magnified when the contests featured black teams against white professionals. Some of this I already knew, but I was amazed at the durability of these pitchers (although Dizzy's premature departure from baseball was doubtless due to the abuse he heaped on his arm). I also was unaware of Satchel's later success in the big leagues. The author is at his best when he discusses the times, the events and emotions, but he's not a natural baseball play-by-play man, and the book bogs down at times with game statistics and dry descriptions. Still a fascinating book, and the booksigning was where I think I had one of my most fortuitous strokes of luck: there were 4 door prizes, and out of about 150 people, my wife Nancy and I won 2 of them: 4 tickets to any Cardinals game, and a signed Stan Musial baseball. We bought lottery tickets on the way home, but no soap.½