Bill Madden - 1954

It is baseball season, isn't it?  For a few more weeks at least until football season starts and then we won't think about it again until the Series if then.  I like to read at least one baseball book each year.

Here is a summer book about the 1954 season by a veteran sportswriter.  It's light and enjoyable, a perfect summer book.  The author tries to say that the 1954 season had lasting importance.  I don't think so, but the nostalgia is thick as names like Willie Mays (graced on the cover), Casey Stengel, and Leo Durocher fly across these pages.  I know about the boys of summer of the 50's.

P. xi  The author interviews Mays for this book but he won't talk about race.  Nothing new there on the part of the Say Hey Kid.

P. 108 The legend is that Leo Durocher stole Babe Ruth's watch in 1929 and that Ruth despised Durocher and called him a liar and a thief to his dying day.  Leo loved being hated; he thought it upset the competition.

P. 116 Stan Musial was a Giant killer and a Durocher torturer.

P. 128 Going into the 1954 season the Indians had finished second three years to the hated Yankees.

There is a picture in the middle of the book of Willie Mays and Tris Speaker.  The latter ended his career with 3,514 hits and a .345 average, perhaps the greatest centerfielder of all time up to that point.

There is a touching picture of Roy Campanella and his son.

P. 144 The Sheppard murder took place in Cleveland on July 4, 1954.

P. 145 The American League beat the Nationals 11 to 9 in the All-Star game in Cleveland back when this game was taken seriously.

P. 151 Tris Speaker taught Larry Doby how to play centerfield.

P. 155 From 1947 to 1957 New York teams dominated the World Series.  Everybody listened to Red Barber, Russ Hodges, and Mel Allen.

P. 157 I love to read about Brooklyn during the Dodger days.  This was a blue-collar borough.  The Daily News was the people's newspaper.  Dick Young was the blue-collar sportswriter of renown.

P. 162 Apparently Dick Young was famous and beloved during his time for covering the Dodgers.

The 50's are sometimes called the golden age of baseball.  Not sure why that is.  I do know it was the age of print and radio and that would make it golden for me.

P. 169 The Robinson-Campanella-Young threesome.  Who was right?  At this point, does it matter?

One of the fascinating things about baseball is its ebb and flow.  At whatever level teams play lots of games, win, lose, go on losing and winning streaks, each game a mystery.

P. 186 A tree dies slowly in Brooklyn as the Dodgers fade in the pennant race and there must have been doubts about Walter Alston who replaced Charlie Dressen that year.

The year 1954 can be seen as the last tranquil year for even though the Brown decision became active the modern civil right era would not start until the following year when Rosa Parks did her thing in Montgomery and integration in the South proceeded ever so slowly.  Was 1954 the last peaceful year in American history?  If so, things were about to change for sure.  Bill Haley showed up in '54 and Elvis cut his first record for Sun records.  The Senator from Wisconsin was wound up.  The Cold War was in full throttle but it's hard for me to understand since I was only 4 going on 5 in 1954.

P. 202 Sports Illustrated was launched in 1954.

P. 204 The Yankees did not win in '54, but it was hardly the twilight of the gods.

P. 231  The Indians won 111 games.  The Yankees won 103, the most ever for a Casey Stengel Yankee team and they still didn't win.  Willie Mays was the NL MVP.  Yogi Berra for the Al despite the better performance by Larry Doby.

P. 249 Willie made the catch and the Giants swept the Indians outscoring them 21 to 9.  The Giants never won another World Series with Willie Mays.

P. 260 By 2013 the percentage of African Americans in the major leagues was only 8.5%.  The author attributes this partially to Southern colleges integrating their basketball and football programs.

P. 262 A continuing theme in the history of baseball in the post Jackie Robinson era is the more rapid integration of the National League than the American League with positive results for the senior circuit as Yankee dominance played itself out.