56

Joe Dimaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports

De: Kostya Kennedy

Narrado por: Kevin T. Collins

Seventy baseball seasons ago, on a May afternoon at Yankee Stadium, Joe DiMaggio lined a hard single to left field. It was the quiet beginning to the most resonant baseball achievement of all time. Starting that day, the vaunted Yankee center fielder kept on hitting - at least one hit in game after game after game. In the summer of 1941, as Nazi forces moved relentlessly across Europe and young American men were drafted by the millions, it seemed only a matter of time before the U.S. went to war. The nation was apprehensive. Yet for two months in that tense summer, America was captivated by DiMaggio's astonishing hitting streak. In 56, Kostya Kennedy tells the remarkable story of how the streak found its way into countless lives, from the Italian kitchens of Newark to the playgrounds of Queens to the San Francisco streets of North Beach; from the Oval Office of FDR to the Upper West Side apartment where Joe's first wife, Dorothy, the movie starlet, was expecting a child. In this crisp, evocative narrative Joe DiMaggio emerges in a previously unseen light, a 26-year-old on the cusp of becoming an icon. He comes alive - a driven ballplayer, a mercurial star and a conflicted husband - as the tension and the scrutiny upon him build with each passing day. DiMaggio's achievement lives on as the greatest of sports records. Alongside the story of DiMaggio's dramatic quest, Kennedy deftly examines the peculiar nature of hitting streaks and with an incisive, modern-day perspective gets inside the number itself, as its sheer improbability heightens both the math and the magic of 56 games in a row.

©2011 Kostya Kennedy (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"The era, the ballplayer and the record are all laid out beautifully.... The tension of the times is matched by the pressure of the streak." ( San Francisco Chronicle)
"Kennedy combines the sweep of a historian, the narrative power of a novelist and the passion of a fan." ( Newsday)
"56 - the number alone still has meaning, but there is a compelling and textured story behind it, a story that pre- and postdates the summer of 1941. Kostya Kennedy tells that story beautifully." (Bob Costas, NBC sportscaster)

Terrific writing

Kennedy offers an entertaining narrative of DiMaggio's hitting streak in 1941. The writing and most of the research is fabulous, especially the stuff at the end where Kostya (who took the time to immerse himself into probability theory) offers the different calculations of how difficult (i.e., impossible) it would be to do what DiMaggio did. The only thing that bothered me was the part where Kennedy writes that nobody had hit better than .400 since Roger Hornsby in 1924 (when writing about Ted Williams' amazing '41 season, when he batted .406). Kostya and his researcher should have known that Hornsby also hit over .400 in 1925, and that Bill Terry was actually the last .400 hitter before Williams (in 1930). Later in the book, Kennedy gets it right, mentioning that Terry had been the last .400 hitter. So, the fact checker was asleep at the wheel or something. Anyway, this is a very entertaining book, though the narrator sounded like he probably didn't know the difference between a ballgame and a cumquat. You guys oughta offer your narrators some tips on proper pronunciation.

Wow...

Would you try another book from Kostya Kennedy and/or Kevin T. Collins?

Yes

Any additional comments?

This was a SLOG. WAY too long and detailed, and the epilogue is just superfluous.

Great story, terrible narrator

Im making it clear now that my bad review has nothing to do with the book itself but with the narrator. Its a shame too because a good narrator would have really brough this story of Joe D to life. I originally bought the kindle version and was about halfway through and saw where they added the audible version with Whispersync. I listened for about 10 minutes and every single second was painful. Something that is very irritating when listening to sports books is when the reader mispronounces names, names of players that any sports fan would know. This narrator constantly butchered the names and read in almost a robot voice. I recommend that whomever selects the reader for a book to get someone that is at least a little knowledge of the sport. I hate when people say "dont buy, dont listen etc.".....like someone is telling me what to do, plus we all have different . So since I dont like that I wont tell anyone to not buy this audio version, but I will say that if I had to do it over again I wouldnt buy it.

The Audible Dimaggio Go-to

56 Joe Dimaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports is a fine book. I want to put it out there if you are trying to find a great Joe Dimaggio book on audible this is clearly the one. Dinner with Dimaggio is also a fine book but that one gets more into what being his friend was like. I love the game accounts and the heart put into this book. A no doubt A+.

Rough start but worth it...

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Good for baseball fans....

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

It really should be more chronological than it is...

Which scene was your favorite?

some of the analytics of how unlikely the streak is were really interesting...

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

no

Any additional comments?

Good one for baseball fans...