THE STANDARD READER
The Standard Reader Books in Brief The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship by David Halberstam (Hyperion, 217 pp., $22.95). Halberstam is a liberal journalist whose political writings you may...
...For many years, the glue that held them together as friends was Williams," Halberstam writes...
...The four had a bond from playing on great Red Sox teams that tragically never won a World Series...
...From the obsession with air conditioning to the travails of shopping for a mattress, Severgnini has an eye for the subtle differences in culture...
...They act like men, not overgrown and pampered boys...
...also shows how things have changed since Severgnini lived here...
...It is our duty, not just our right to criticize you...
...Jamie M. Fly...
...by Beppe Severgnini (Broadway, 256 pp., $25.90...
...Fred Barnes Ciao, America...
...Actually, he used most of his time to record his impressions of America, and the resulting book was so popular in Italy when it was published in 1995, Severgnini's small house on 34th Street became a stop for Italian tourists visiting D.C...
...He felt the same about them...
...The book also shows the author's love for America, as when he watches fireworks on the Fourth of July: "This is an America that warms your heart...
...They've all been bestsellers for good reasons...
...And he's right...
...In a column in Corriere della Sera this year, he wrote of America, "We are not your subjects...
...Williams was irascible, selfish, and often childish, but they loved him...
...Halber-stam tells the story of each player, when they met, their marriages (all lasted but Williams's), their skill as ballplayers and teammates, their success later in life...
...Try fiction instead...
...Unfortunately, Ciao, America...
...Now appearing in translation, Ciao, America...
...If this book doesn't bring tears to your eyes, no sports book will...
...An Italian journalist, Severgnini spent a year in Washington, ostensibly to write columns for Corriere della Sera...
...is full of witty commentary about American life...
...is worth reading, if only to remember how recently Europeans changed their minds about America...
...The four, a second baseman, a shortstop, and two outfielders, now in their eighties, remained fast friends after their baseball careers ended in the 1950s...
...They're knowledgeable, touching, and beautifully written for adults, not adolescents...
...Halberstam is a liberal journalist whose political writings you may dislike, but not his sports books...
...An Italian Discovers the U.S...
...seems almost a trip down memory lane...
...But Ciao, America...
...When the next season started, Dominic called him every morning with the latest Red Sox score and an update on how they were playing," Halberstam writes...
...And it is here, this evening, on a dark riverbank...
...Visiting for two days in a nursing home, DiMaggio found Williams wasn't getting baseball scores every day...
...The peg for his latest, The Teammates, is a road trip to Florida by two former Boston Red Sox players, Dominic DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky, to visit their dying friend, Ted Williams...
...And Halberstam shows how different they are from today's players—less wealthy, smaller egos, but blessed with maturity, strength of character, and good sense...
...Their other lifelong pal, Bobby Doerr, couldn't make the trip from Oregon because his wife was ailing...
...It is the united, unpretentious, honest country that exists only in schoolbooks and presidential addresses...
...With transatlantic relations at their lowest point since before World War II, Severgnini's Ciao, America...
...Someone that great, one of the best ever at what they all did, had rare peer power...
...Would you believe me if I told you that I have recently begun to appreciate what it must have felt like to be an Indian under the British Raj...
...Robert Kagan has insisted, "It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world...
Vol. 8 • June 2003 • No. 41
