Summer of '49: The Yankees and the Red Sox in Postwar America (50 page)

October 2,1949: The Yankees’ Tommy Henrich is shown being congratulated by his teammates as he scores his eighth-inning home run. It gave the Yankees a 2-0 lead.
(UPI/BETTMANN NEWSPHOTOS)

October 2, 1949: Stengel (seated center) and his triumphant Yankees celebrate in their locker room after defeating Boston 5-3 to win the pennant.
(AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS)

Joe McCarthy, manager of the Red Sox, walks alone through the corridor under the stands in Yankee Stadium after visiting the victorious Yankees in their locker room.
(AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS)

The Dodgers’ Jackie Robinson scores Brooklyn’s first run in the second game of the World Series. Gil Hodges has just singled for the Dodgers. Vic Raschi, the Yankee pitcher, later credited Robinson for breaking his concentration—and thus allowing Snider to get a hit.
(UPI/BETTMANN NEWSPHOTOS)

The end of a great pitchers’ duel: Tommy Henrich crosses home plate after his ninth-inning home run off Don Newcombe in the first game of the World Series.
(AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS)

A Biography of David Halberstam

David Halberstam (1934–2007) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author. He is best known for both his courageous coverage of the Vietnam War for the New York Times, as well as for his twenty-one nonfiction books—which cover a wide array of topics, from the plight of Detroit and the auto industry to the captivating origins of baseball’s fiercest rivalry. Halberstam wrote for numerous publications throughout his career and, according to journalist George Packer, single-handedly set the standard of “the reporter as fearless truth teller.”

Born in New York City, Halberstam was the second son of Dr. Charles Halberstam, an army surgeon, and Blanche Levy Halberstam, a schoolteacher. Along with his older brother, Michael, Halberstam was raised in Westchester County and went to school in Yonkers. He attended Harvard University, where he was the managing editor of the
Crimson
, the student-run newspaper. Dedicated to forging a career in journalism, Halberstam worked with the
West Point Daily Times Leader
in Mississippi after graduation and at the Nashville
Tennessean
, where he covered the civil rights movement, a year later. Halberstam joined the Washington bureau of the
New York Times
in 1960. He worked as a Times foreign correspondent, moving to Congo and then to South Vietnam to cover the war in 1962.

Throughout Halberstam’s coverage of the Vietnam War, he was committed to reporting what he saw despite intense and continuous political pressure. Halberstam reported on the corrupt nature of the American-backed government in Saigon. Unlike many of his colleagues, he refused to report the misinformation that American commanders fed to the press, choosing instead to talk to soldiers and sergeants on the frontlines. His steadfast dedication left President Kennedy so infuriated that he personally asked Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, then-publisher of the
New York Times
, to replace Halberstam. Sulzberger refused.

Halberstam won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Vietnam and worked for the Times’ Warsaw bureau after the war. After leaving the
Times
in the late sixties, Halberstam turned his focus to writing books and magazine articles. He described his books as stories of power—sometimes used wisely, sometimes disastrously. Halberstam quickly established himself with
The Best and the Brightest
(1972), a blistering, landmark account of America’s role in Vietnam. For each social or political book he published—such as
The Powers That Be
,
The Fifties
, and
The Children
—Halberstam wrote one on sports, one of his favorite subjects. His books were regularly praised for their impeccable detail as well as for their absorbing narrative style.

Halberstam died in a car accident in Menlo Park, California, in 2007, at the age of seventy-three. He was en route to an interview for an upcoming book about the 1958 National Football League championship game between the New York Giants and the Baltimore Colts. His obituary in the
Guardian
hailed him as “one of the most talented, influential and prolific of the American journalists who came of age professionally in the 1960s.”

Young Halberstam and his typewriter in the Congo in 1960.

An editorial meeting at the
New York Times
office, around 1962. Halberstam is at far right; Scotty Reston, who hired Halberstam, is to his right.

Halberstam, shown second from left, walking with military officers in Vietnam, around 1962.

Halberstam with Robert F. Kennedy, around 1967.

Halberstam and his daughter, Julia, at a Fourth of July parade in Nantucket, in 1983.