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Audio CD Description As baseball legend Ted Williams lay dying in Florida, his old Boston Red Sox teammates Johnny Pesky and Dom DiMaggio piled into a car and drove 1,300 miles to see their friend. Another member of the close-knit group, Bobby Doerr, remained in Oregon to tend to his wife who had suffered a stroke. Besides providing a poignant travelogue of the elderly Pesky and DiMaggio's trip, David Halberstam's The Teammates goes back in time to profile the men as young ballplayers. Although it is enlightening to learn about Doerr, Pesky, and DiMaggio, the leader of the group and star of the book is Williams. Halberstam portrays the notoriously moody and difficult Williams as a complex man: driven by a rough childhood and a fiercely competitive nature to become perhaps the greatest pure hitter of all time while also being a magnetic personality and loving friend. While there is nothing exceptionally unusual about old men who have stayed friends (plenty of people stay friends, after all), baseball gives this particular relationship a unique makeup. Unlike most friendships, that of Williams, Doerr, Pesky, and DiMaggio was viewed all summer long by hooting, hollering Red Sox fans. As such, their bond is forged both of individual accomplishment, win-loss records, numerous road trips, and, since they played for the Red Sox, annual doses of disappointment. Halberstam, author of Summer of '49 and October 1964 is the ideal writer to tell two equally intriguing stories, both rich in America's pastime. Although he occasionally drops himself into the narrative, one expects that of Halberstam and gladly accepts it in exchange for the highly readable exposition infused with poetic majesty that has become his trademark. --John Moe

Customer Reviews Wonderful but missing. I suppose when you talk about baseball, you talk nostalgia and such is the material of Teammates about 4 Red Sox players who bonded together through most of their adult lives. There are some wonderful stories. Ted Williams stories are always comic in their format. Pesky's stories are working class all the way. Doore is the ideal American and Dimagio's are the most poignant. While the book reveals great insights into these people such as Pesky's motivations and personality, I never did quite get the understanding of why these four players became such friends and how they stood together so long as a unit. The book also makes a dramatic time jump from their baseball years into their last years skipping decades of their lives. What happened in those years? The book fills us with stories but never does have a tight story line. In many ways it's a scrapbook of memories from four people and their lives. For a Red Sox fan, as I have been a lifelong one, it's a great read. If you're not one, you may become one after this book. a character piece There isn't much information about baseball in this book, nor much new insight into the players involved. It is kind of just a slice of life of some aging ballplayers. I suspect if it was any longer than a short 200 or so pages it would have gotten at least a little tedious. Wonderfull Read This should be a movie- what a great, great, story! If you love baseball, friendship, and a good read- this is a must own. Its a very quick read, and it leaves you with great feelings. Awesome Book!