Streak - by Michael Seidel (Paperback)

About the Book

Originally published: New York: McGraw-Hill, c1988.

Book Synopsis

Streak vividly and poignantly tells the story of "Joltin' Joe" DiMaggio's legendary fifty-six-game hitting streak and the last golden summer of baseball before America was engulfed by the maelstrom of the Second World War. That long-lost summer also witnessed other unforgettable events: Ted Williams's quest to bat 400 and Lefty Grove's pursuit of his three-hundredth victory; a sizzling, epic race between the Dodgers and the Cardinals for the National League pennant; and Mickey Owen's infamous passed ball in the fourth game of the World Series.

Featuring complete box scores for each game, Streak showcases DiMaggio's crowning achievement, commemorates a baseball season like no other, and invites us to an America in the last moments of its innocence.

Review Quotes

"[DiMaggio's] feat is lovingly chronicled, game by game, in Streak, a book New York Yankee fans will admire. . . . [Seidel] has interviewed many of the men who played with and against DiMaggio that year and tells just how DiMaggio managed to keep on hitting and hitting."--New York Times Book Review

"This book chronicles the intricate factual events of DiMaggio's achievement, and pays the best kind of proper respect, while providing the right sort of description. . . . [It] succeeds with a simple and honorable premise. The streak itself is such a good story, such an important event in our cultural history, that the day-by-day chronicle will shape a bare sequence into a wonderful drama with beginning, middle and end."--The New York Review of Books

About the Author

Michael Seidel is Jesse and George Siegel Professor of Humanities at Columbia University. He is the author of many books, including Ted Williams: A Baseball Life, available in a Bison Books edition.