“1962: Baseball and America in the Time of JFK” by David Krell is 278 pages and was published on May 1, 2021 by the University of Nebraska Press.
This book is not a complete sports book, it is more about the history and society of 1962. However, it has some good sports sections in it with references to the year 1962.
Baseball has some excitement in this year as the National League pennant came down to a three game playoff in California with the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants facing off against each other. In the American League the ever-powerful New York Yankees were the winner.
The primary source of entertainment came from the fact that it was led by a handsome president and a young attractive First Lady in John and Jacqueline Kennedy and their illusion of Camelot.
Baseball and society crossed paths in Hollywood as a California Angels pitcher named Bo Belinsky was dating actress Mamie Van Doren and the gossip pages were abuzz on this combination.
People in the United States were beaming over the space program and the potential for growth. Very little other attention is given to sports in this book which is a negative for its casual attempt to draw in the sports nuts across the land.
The reader can find a wealth of information about what the American Society was like in 1962, Author David Krell reached good highs on that but really fell down trying to market this as a sports book.
Sports people likely won’t like this book and the mentions are too scant. If this time of innocence intrigues you and 1962 may be special to you then yes, of course, this is just the book to read.
1962 Baseball and Society Review
In the final judgement of this book , I don’t want to come down hard on it but I write sports reviews and this just isn’t in this book. With that said I give it a D grade on sports and a B+ on society of the year 1962.
I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
About the author– Tom Knuppel has been writing about baseball and sports for a few decades. As an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan he began with the blog CardinalsGM. Tom is a member of the United Cardinals Bloggers and the Baseball Bloggers Alliance. He also maintains the History of Cardinals website. More recently he has been busy at KnupSolutions and the primary writer of many sports at KnupSports and adds content at Sports 2.0. Tom is a retired High School English and Speech teacher and has completed over one hundred sportsbook reviews. He also can be followed on Twitter at tknup. Feel free to contact Tom at tknuppel@gmail.com
