In this delightful book that every baseball fan will cherish, ten outstanding ballplayers remember the heyday of the game in the 1930s and 1940s. It was the era of Gehrig and DiMaggio; of Foxx, Greenberg, and Williams; of Grove and Feller. Elden Auker, Tommy Henrich, Dom DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Bob Feller recall some great rivalries: Auker pitched to Ruth and Gehrig, then faced Dizzy Dean in an unforgettable World Series; Henrich was a clutch player for the Yankees who alertly turned a passed-ball third strike into a World Series victory; Dom DiMaggio was a superb center fielder who batted .298 lifetime and nearly ended his brother Joe's hitting streak; Pesky, a Red Sox mainstay, was blamed for Enos Slaughter's dash home that was the most memorable play of the 1946 Red Sox-Cardinals World Series; and Feller was a teenager when he faced — among others — Foxx, Greenberg, and Joe DiMaggio.

But this was also the era of great Negro Leagues stars who never had the opportunity to play in the major leagues. Buck O'Neil remembers the outstanding players of his day who never got their chance or whose turn came too late — Oscar Charleston, Cool Papa Bell, Josh Gibson, and Satchel Paige among them.

Two great events happened in the 1940s, and one of them would change the game forever. World War II took some of these great players off the diamond and put them into a different kind of uniform. Warren Spahn pitched his first game in 1942 and didn't pitch again until the war ended, getting his first victory in 1946 (nonetheless he won more games than any other left-hander in history). As he recalls here, he served his country memorably in the war. Then in 1947 Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, followed only a few months later by Larry Doby, the first African-American in the American League, who vividly describes what it felt like to be the only black ballplayer in the clubhouse — and the league. The game began to change after integration, and home run king Ralph Kiner remembers how some clubs were quick to sign African-American players and thrive. Meanwhile, some Negro Leagues stars, such as Monte Irvin, itched for the opportunity to face the major leaguers and prove that, like Robinson and Doby, they could compete with the best.

All of these ballplayers recall their favorite memories: the games that mattered most, the players they all admired, the childhood experiences that shaped their lives, and the deep affection for the game that has always remained with them.

Illustrated throughout, The Only Game in Town is a fascinating trip through two decades when baseball changed profoundly. Like The Glory of Their Times, it is a book that will find a permanent place on every fan's bookshelf.

"This first entry in an ambitious, multivolume oral history of baseball compiled by former commissioner Vincent collects the memories of 10 notable players from the 1930s and '40s. The tone is primarily upbeat, as when Dominic DiMaggio — one of the almost-as-talented but often forgotten brothers of Joe — sticks to the sunny side: 'I think it's just a wonderful, wonderful game.' The athletes have a forgivable tendency to ramble down memory lane and avoid deep analysis, often simply offering play-by-plays of famous games. Not surprisingly, then, it's the early integrators and Negro League pros like Larry Doby whose comments make the best reading; their stories have a drama and gravitas that some of the others lack. Vincent did not impose structure on his subjects, and there are a few redundancies in the narrative (although the twice-told story of Hank Greenberg storming into the White Sox locker room and calling out whoever made anti-Semitic remarks during the game is worth repeating). Dedicated fans stand to gain the most from this nostalgic spin through one slice of baseball history." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Four decades ago a professor of business and finance at New York University named Lawrence Ritter published one of the most remarkable books in the literature of baseball. It was called 'The Glory of Their Times,' and it contained the tape-recorded reminiscences of two dozen surviving players from the game's early days. If ever there was a labor of love, this book was it. Ritter had spent five years... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) researching it and traveled some 75,000 miles to track down the old men — Rube Marquard, Fred Snodgrass, Chief Meyers, Babe Herman, Lefty O'Doul et al. — who eagerly and happily talked about the days of their youth.

'The Glory of Their Times' came out of nowhere, surprising readers with the vividness and clarity of the ballplayers' recollections and the depth of their love for the game. I reviewed it for the paper in North Carolina for which I was then working. The review has long since vanished into the great newspaper morgue in the sky, but I know that it was unconditionally ecstatic. I was scarcely alone. Red Smith called it 'the single best baseball book of all time,' and Roger Angell described it as 'an almost perfect new baseball book,' sentiments that were echoed in review after review. Readers responded similarly; to date some 400,000 copies have been sold — an astonishing figure for any book, let alone one about old-time baseball players — and the two-disc audio CD of Ritter's interviews continues to enjoy lively sales.

Others attempted to replicate the success of 'The Glory of Their Times,' including Ritter himself in collaboration with Donald Honig in writing 'The Image of Their Greatness' (1979), but the original remains the gold standard. 'The Only Game in Town' is the latest effort to mine this territory, and though it certainly has its moments, it too falls short. Fay Vincent, who served a short term as baseball commissioner in the early 1990s before resigning in September 1992 after receiving a 'no-confidence' vote from the game's loutish owners, loves baseball dearly and knows it intimately, all of which shine through here, but the interviews with these players from the 1930s and "40s simply lack the depth of those that Ritter conducted.

'The Only Game in Town' is a direct result of Vincent's passion for the game and his awareness of the hugely important part that Ritter played in documenting its history. Inspired by Ritter's example, he persuaded the Baseball Hall of Fame to establish a 'systematic oral history project,' and set about, with the help of others, conducting the interviews of which this is the first collection, with future ones promised. It is an estimable undertaking, but this volume has the feel of a rush job.

To an extent that is understandable. The men with whom Vincent and/or his associates spoke aren't getting any younger, and in fact one of them — Larry Doby — died three years ago. Lawrence Ritter was aware of a racing clock — he started his research after the death in 1961 of Ty Cobb — and so is Vincent. When he began his own interviews, he realized that these men 'were growing older and their stories would soon be lost forever,' so it's no wonder he felt a certain urgency, but one wishes that these men had reached a little deeper into their memories and had talked at greater length about their days in the game.

They were, as Vincent well knows, crucial days in baseball history, for in these two decades the lords of the game came under pressure to open it to African Americans and then very reluctantly acceded to that pressure. The desegregation of the game is the central theme here, and virtually all of those who address the question, whether black or white, express enthusiasm for the changes it brought about. That many players fiercely opposed integration is acknowledged from time to time, usually with regard to the insults endured by Doby, Jackie Robinson and other pioneers, but the voices of those players are not heard here. It was too late to hear from, say, Enos Slaughter or Pinky Higgins, but plenty of others who resisted blacks are still around, and in the interests of historical accuracy (as opposed to nostalgia), a few of them should have been included.

Monte Irvin, one of the many players who made it out of the Negro Leagues into the Major Leagues before their skills declined, knows better than most just how much baseball denied itself, not to mention players and fans, by excluding black players. He says:

'They missed the cream of the crop. When I say the cream of the crop, if they had taken the fellows say around 1932 or "33, they would have had some outstanding players. They would have got the chance to see Cool Papa Bell run. And they would have had the chance to see Oscar Charleston play. Oscar Charleston was the Willie Mays of that era. Feared no pitcher, just a wonderful, wonderful all-around baseball player. So they missed all that. ... it is just too bad that they didn't start earlier.'

By all means it is too bad, yet the integration of baseball came at a cost to the black community. Toni Morrison has repeatedly written about how much of that community's identity and singularity were lost with integration, and the great Negro League player John 'Buck' O'Neil echoes that sentiment. At the time he and his fellow players welcomed the Dodgers' signing of Robinson 'because we thought if they integrated baseball, they were going to start integrating other things,' but it didn't quite work out that way. Another two decades passed before the country started to address segregation in a serious way, yet as integration slowly came about, the black hotel owners and restaurateurs who catered to blacks were shoved aside by whites, just as the Major Leagues shoved aside the Negro Leagues.

So 'The Only Game in Town' isn't quite as sunny as 'The Glory of Their Times' (Ritter interviewed no black players), but there's some straight talk about how the game changed, and there's plenty of affection for the game itself. The players interviewed include Bob Feller, Warren Spahn, Ralph Kiner, Dom DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky. They talk a lot about Hank Greenberg, who had to face anti-Semitic insults for a decade and a half before Robinson joined the Dodgers; about Ted Williams ('the best hitter I ever saw,' according to Feller); about Robinson, who 'wasn't the best ballplayer we had in the Negro League,' according to O'Neil, 'but the right guy'; and about Satchel Paige, of whom Doby says: 'Supposedly I roomed with Satch while he was with Cleveland, but I roomed with his luggage.' And of course they talk about baseball. Here's Dom DiMaggio:

'As far as baseball goes, it's a clean-cut game. Everything is right there before you. You see everything. And the integrity of the game had been unblemished and outstanding during our days. I'm not overly pleased about what has happened in recent years, with the labor strikes and strikes which should never have happened. The fans took what happened previously. But I don't think they'll take another one. And I believe management and employees should be able to get together and iron this thing out. The game was a national pastime for all those many years, and those of us who played it years ago, played really, specifically, first, for the love of the game.'

It's a different game now, and a different country. Love of the game still counts for a lot — witness those players for the Washington Nationals who play their hearts out despite all the lousy deals they've gotten from the lords of baseball and the politicians of this city — but big money has weakened players' loyalty to teams and cities, and drugs have taken a nasty toll on the public's respect for the game. It's still baseball, though, and as this book reminds us, it still has a powerful hold on the national imagination.

Jonathan Yardley's e-mail address is yardleyj(at)washpost.com." Reviewed by Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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In this tie-in to an HBO sports documentary, some of baseball's greatest legends reminisce in their own words about the game they played and loved. of photos.

Fay Vincent is a former commissioner of Major League Baseball and the author of the previous volume in this baseball oral history series, The Only Game in Town.