Teammates

In early October 2001, Dominic DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky begin a 1,300-mile trip by car to visit their beloved teammate Ted Williams, knowing that he is dying. Bobby Doerr, the fourth member of this close group-"my guys," Williams used to call them-is unable to be with them because he is back in Oregon tending to his wife of sixty-three years, Monica, who has suffered her second stroke. Thus begins David Halberstam's The Teammates, a profoundly human story of four great ballplayers who have made the passage from sports icons-when they were young and seemingly indestructible-to men dealing with the vulnerabilities of growing older. At the core of the book is the friendship of these four very different but extraordinary men, the key players in a remarkable Boston Red Sox team, who stayed close to each other for more than sixty years. First among them was Ted Williams, not only a dominating player but a dominating personality as well. "It was like there was a star on top of his head, pulling everyone toward him like a beacon," recalls Johnny Pesky. Pesky met the others when he was still a clubhouse boy in Portland and they would tip him a quarter to shine their shoes. He would soon become one of the league's toughest hitters and something of a little brother to Williams. Dom DiMaggio, the center fielder, was an athlete carried as much by his remarkable intelligence as by his natural talent. Small and bespectacled, he grew up partially in the shadow of his older brother, but would end up a seven-time American League All-Star. It was to Dom that Ted would increasingly turn for support in later years. And then there was future Hall of Famer Bobby Doerr, a professional ballplayer at sixteen, who right from the start displayed a natural grace and maturity that made him the perfect buddy for the temperamental, ever-contentious Williams. The Teammates is the story of two trips: the final one that DiMaggio and Pesky are taking to see Williams, and another, a flight back in time, as they and Bobby Doerr recall the wonders of their years together and reminisce about a magical era. What Halberstam has given us is a book about baseball, and something more, the richness of friendship.Halberstam, David is the author of 'Teammates', published 0009 under ISBN 9780786888672 and ISBN 0786888679.