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Camelot: A View From the Dugout
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14196 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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7 / 1988 |
2,317 Words |
| Author
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James P. Brosnan
James P. Brosnan is a journalist and author of Pennant Race
and The Long Season. |
SEASON OF GLORY
The Amazing Saga of the 1961 New York Yankees
Ralph Houk and Robert W. Creamer
New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1988
320 PP., $18.95
A distinctive memoir leaves its imprint on the sands of time. In Season of Glory Ralph Houk and Robert W. Creamer have collaborated in focusing on a significant slice of American history. The year was 1961, the advent of the Kennedy administration. It was trumpeted as a new era and an age of enlightenment, a time when the White House would become known as "Camelot on the Potomac."
John F. Kennedy, hatless and handsome for his inaugural speech, challenged the citizenry to "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Kennedy minions, the best and brightest of the eastern establishment, promised that the United States, under Democratic leadership, would once again be No. 1 in the world.
It was a glorious spectacle, those first days of '61. But by the fall the country was in a political and military mess; the champagne had soured, and Camelot had tarnished.
But all was not ill that year in the United States. There was a band of doughty Yankees, conquering all opponents, making history. Ralph Houk, a decorated Army hero, was their leader. Although he was just making his debut as the New York Yankees manager, Houk was supremely confident about his team's prospects, even in the spring. Somewhat short on oratorical rhetoric, Houk declared, "We will win."
And win they did. In the grand tradition of Yankee teams, they ran roughshod over American League teams to take the pennant, and then trampled the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series. (Since I pitched for Cincinnati that season, my memory of the trampling is still vivid.)
Contrasting the success of a baseball team with the failure of a new government may seem impertinent to those outside of baseball. But historian Jacques Barzun wasn't kidding around when he wrote: "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game."
Yankee domination of the national
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