Me and Dimaggio: A Baseball Fan Goes in Search of His Gods - Softcover

All real baseball fans can conjure up the moment the game first cast its spell on them. For Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, it came through the static of the radio, spurring his imagination to witness vividly a three home-run performance in the late 1940s by the great Joe DiMaggio. Cut to half a lifetime later: Lehmann-Haupt, a New York Times book critic, decides to set off on a year-long journey into the heart of America's national pastime. Less intent on recapturing that first moment as on exploring the game's sometimes mystical and continual appeal, he follows a season from spring training to winter meetings. Me and DiMaggio is memoir cloaked in reportage, a tricky melding of genres that's never quite sure whether it's journal or journalism. Still, there are so many good insights into the game here--and a fascinating, if oddly sad, encounter with the elusive DiMaggio himself--that if Lehmann-Haupt doesn't quite reach the fences, he at least gets himself into scoring position.

Throughout Christopher Lehmann-Haupt's season of innings spent as a baseball reporter, he was haunted by the 1948 game that first made him a fan - a game in which Joe DiMaggio hit three home runs against the Cleveland Indians. Ultimately, he found himself confronting DiMaggio with a story that he did not want to believe, but that had brought him face-to-face with the fantasies of an entire generation of baseball fans.Me and DiMaggio narrates this remarkable series of adventures and misadventures that took New York Times book reviewer Christopher Lehmann-Haupt around the country on an unusual personal mission - to follow a year in baseball and all its rituals, from spring training through the World Series and to the winter executive meetings. The result is a behind-the-scenes look at the entire cast of a season: the players, the owners, the promoters, and, of course, the reporters.By turns funny, audacious, gossipy, and eloquent, Me and DiMaggio takes on a dramatic year and makes it into an experience for all seasons. (6 X 9, 304 pages)