The Teammates: A Portrait of Friendship

xvi, 220 pp. Introduction by Jane Leavy. "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. Doerr is back in Oregon tending to his wife of sixty-three years, who has suffered a second stroke. Acclaimed author David Halberstam has given us a book -- filled with historical details and first-hand accounts -- about baseball and about something more, the richness of friendship. "