PINSTRIPE EMPIRE

 THE NEW YORK YANKEES 

BEFORE THE BABE TO AFTER THE BOSS

I know you are use to seeing Harvey Frommer's (Official reviewer of BTB) reviews here on BTB but when a writer like Marty Appel writes a book like this you could never have too many reviews.

If you are a regular Behind the Bombers/BehindtheBombers.com reader there is no reason to explain who Marty Appel is.  But to those of you who don’t know who he is he is a long time Yankees author, one time Yankees PR person and a big baseball fan.  He started his Yankees career answering Mickey Mantle’s fan mail and wound up an award winning Yankee telecast producer for WPIX in NYC.  He penned many Yankee books including two fantastic books on Yankee Legend Thurman Munson. 

You can insert just about every cliché right here as this book is worth all that praise and more.  You can see this book is a labor of love that was a lifetime in the making.  It is a chronological history the Pinstripes full of facts with little chestnuts added by the author that shows the human side of the team that we all love.  Even if you don’t love the Yankees or just won’t admit you do, the structure of this book makes it not just one of the best Bomber books around but one of the finest baseball books around.

You can’t get anymore Yankee than this with a Foreward by Yogi Berra and Preface by Bernie Williams.  Both of those players are well represented in this fine book. 

There are fact supported by very interesting tidbits throughout the book.  For instance the author delivers the facts about 1935 that Lou Gehrig was named captain by Joe McCarthy (first one since Everett Scott) that year, which is widely know, but he also points out that it was the only year Gehrig didn’t have to share the stage with Babe Ruth or Joe DiMaggio.  Sort of like the link year between the Babe and Joe D. 

The book is full of stuff like this brings me up to speed on the years before my Yankee comprehension started.  The descriptions are so personal that it made me feel like I lived it myself.  The stories that occurred during my fandom blew some cobwebs off my own memory bring back some (mostly) good times and some not so good. 

This book is the book to go out and pre order this way when it is released on May 8^th you can read it by the time Old Timer’s Day comes along.  This way when the introductions take place you can have stories fresh in your mind.  Some that you live and some you relive.  As the title says “The New York Yankees From Before The Babe To After The Boss.”  If it’s not in here it didn’t happen yet.  Throughout the season I will be discussing passages from this book hoping to rekindle your memories as well as mine.