Season of '42: Joe D, Teddy Ballgame, and Baseball?s Fight to Survive a Turbulent First Year of War Paperback – March 3, 2015

Lots of baseball information in this book. Plus historical facts about WWII I'd never heard before. Thank you Jack Cavanaugh!

The reason I like Baseball

Mr Cavanaugh is a good writer but missed the boat by not reporting that the Cleveland Indians' season of '48 was surpassed by '54 when they won 110 games

Bamboozled.Boy, did this sound like a book I would enjoy. Maybe since the title sounded like David Halberstam's "Summer of '49", I thought it would be a good read.I was wrong. Save your time, read the Summer of '49.Jack Cavanaugh slung this collection of stories together with little care with respect to the facts he cites. The author breaks out the same old stuff that most baseball fan's already knew. He blends the baseball with the WWII stories, just like author Michael Seidel did so well with "Streak: Joe DiMaggio and the Summer of '41". If you like Halberstam's "Summer of '49", you will love Seidel's "The Streak".The Season of '42 is no where near as informative or interesting as the aforementioned baseball books.I was counting errors as I was flipping the pages. For example, Cavanaugh jabbers about the good old days at Yankee Stadium. He lauded the days in 1942 when a General Admission seat would cost a mere $3.50. Throughout the book, he takes time to convert 1942 currency into the equivalent sum in 2012. It just so happens he skipped this conversion, which would show the reader that the ticket would cost $45 in today's money. Besides which, Yankee Stadium created the notion of a "nosebleed" seat and I am sure that $3.50 would place you about 10 stories away from the action.Jack continued to describe the wonders of Yankee Stadium because it did not blight your view with advertising billboards until after the renovation of 1975/76. Wanna bet? Yankee Stadium, as much as I love the place, had plenty of billboards before 1975. It was never a place to go if you are looking for a bargain for a cheap seat. The author uses these cheap, boring comparisons to show us how things were so much better in the good old days.In summary, the book is sloppy and trite. That is except for the title, as it creatively links this 1942 baseball story to books that were best sellers in the good old days when authors got the facts right before putting them in print.

I stopped reading this book, it kept getting worse and worse. Not only were there lots of errors, but about 1/3 of the way through the editor gave up reading the book and after the author was free to write whatever irrelevant thought that came into their head. The author would preview a point and then forget later down the page that he previewed something.

Well this can be short and sweet this is a book so poorly edited that it borders on being unreadable. The book itself is very weak and the subject matter just doesn't gel. Instead of focusing in detail how baseball fought to survive the war, we get a tepid history of the late 30s and early 40s in baseball combined with a weak milky thin military history. It tries to be several different things. Basically this is a weak book and I would suggest you avoid it. There's no upside.

This was a terrible book.Nothing in the book was said that hadn't been said in other books. And the errors--I won't list them as other reviewers have pointed them out already.

Putting aside the content for the moment, this is certainly the most mistake filled book I have ever read. As the other reviewer noted, I picked up on the statement that the Yankees won the 1959 pennant as well as the photo that inexcusably said the Giants moved to Los Angeles. Here is a sampling of other errors contained in an 11 page section:p. 165- Says that Phil Rizzuto impressed the Yankees top scout, Paul Krichell, who would later sign Mickey Mantle. Wrong, Kritchell earlier signed Lou Gehrig. Tom Greenwade signed Mantle.p. 167- Says that when Rizzuto signed with the Yankees in 1937, his father opened a bottle of homeade wine, since it was during Prohibition. Wrong, Prohibition ended in 1933.p. 170- Says Hack Wilson's 56 home runs in 1930 was second only to Babe Ruth's 60, which occurred in 1926. Wrong, 1927.p. 173- Says Rizutto played for Casey Stengal from 1949 through 1956, a period during wich the Yankees won 9 World Series. Wrong, even if the Yankees had won the World Series every year,which they didn't, that's only 8 seasons.p. 174- Discusses a 1942 Yankee game against the Phillies in which the Yankees set a ML record for double plays. Wrong, unless they had interleague play that year.p. 175- Says Rizzutto was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1984. Wrong, 1994At that point, I stopped reading the book.As for the content, there is nothing new baseball wise and in fact, much of the story has nothing to do with 1942, as the author spends pages discussing the biographies of Ted Williams, the Dimaggio brothers, Rizzutto, etc. Some of the WW II information was interesting, but given all the errors in the baseball part, who knows how much was accurate.The book reeks of something that was slapped together quickly to capitalize on the trend in publishing books about specific seasons. Save your money.