The Teammates: A Portrait of Friendship

More than 6 years after his death David Halberstam remains one of this country’s most respected journalists and revered authorities on American life and history in the years since WWII. A Pulitzer Prize-winner for his ground-breaking reporting on the Vietnam War, Halberstam wrote more than 20 books, almost all of them bestsellers. His work has stood the test of time and has become the standard by which all journalists measure themselves.

The Teammates is the profoundly moving story of four great baseball players who have made the passage from sports icons--when they were young and seemingly indestructible--to men dealing with the vulnerabilities of growing older. At the core of the book is the friendship of these four very different men--Boston Red Sox teammates Bobby Doerr, Dominic DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Ted Williams--who remained close for more than sixty years.

The book starts out in early October 2001, when Dominic DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky begin a 1,300-mile trip by car to visit their beloved friend Ted Williams, whom they know is dying. Bobby Doerr, the fourth member of this close group--＂my guys,＂ Williams used to call them--is unable to join them.This is a book--filled with historical details and first-hand accounts--about baseball and about something more: the richness of friendship.

David Halberstam (1934-2007) was the author of twenty-two books, including fifteen bestsellers. Born in New York City, Halberstam spent much of the 1960s as a reporter for The New York Times, covering the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. His Vietnam reporting earned him both a George C. Polk Award and a 1964 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Vanity Fair dubbed Halberstam ＂the Moses of American journalism,＂ and the subjects of his books reflect his passion and range: war, foreign policy, history, and sports. The Best and the Brightest (1962), his sixth book, a critique of the Kennedy administration’s Vietnam policy, became a #1 bestseller. His next book, The Powers that Be, a study of four American media companies, was hailed by The New York Times as a ＂prodigy of research.＂ Many of Halberstam’s books explored themes in professional sports, including bestsellers The Teammates, a portrait of the friendship between baseball players Ted Williams, Dominic DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Bobby Doerr, and The Education of a Coach, a profile of New England Patriots’ Coach Bill Belichick.


Jane Leavy is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Last Boy, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, and the comic novel Squeeze Play. She has written for many publications, including the New York Times, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated. A native New Yorker, she attended Barnard College and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she wrote her master’s thesis on a childhood hero, Red Smith, the late sports columnist for the New York Times; this was later published in essay form by the Village Voice. Leavy lives in Washington, DC, and Massachusetts.