Those Damn Yankees

Those Damn Yankees:The Secret Life of America’s Greatest Franchise

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This volume is an unconventional foray into the underworld of baseball. It looks at issues such as baseball's cult of memory, numerology in sport and society, the emergence of an anti-competitive league and exploitation by a cartel.

Nominated for the Casey Award for 1999's Best Baseball Book

This new edition of Dean Chadwin's widely-acclaimed book has been expanded to include the Yankees' World Series appearance in the 1999 season.

This paperback edition of Dean Chadwin’s widely-discussed book has been expanded to include the Yankee’s World Series appearance in the 1999 season. The New York Yankees have won twenty-five championships, more than any other American professional sports franchise. The team’s rich history includes a color bar, the towering home runs and bottomless appetites of Babe Ruth, the early and intensely lamented death of Lou Gehrig, frequent labor disputes between players and owners, and the free verse of Yogi Berra and Phil Rizzuto. The 1999 season has emerged as one of the franchise’s most memorable both on and off the field. As the squad raced through an all-time record for victories to win the World Series, observers wondered whether the club’s stadium would return to its wandering ways of a century ago. The Yankees abandoned Baltimore in 1902. After seventy-five years in the Bronx, Yankee management are now pursuing a move to Manhattan or the suburbs that could tap into millions of public dollars. Those Damn Yankees is a riveting and unconventional foray into the murky underworld of baseball, from the incipient sexual desire of young girls visiting the Derek Jeter on-line fansite to the boozy macho heart of the Yankee Nation in the now-endangered bleachers. In compelling asides, Dean Chadwin looks at issues such as baseball’s cult of memory, numerology in sport and society, the emergence of an anti-competitive baseball league of haves and have-nots, and a sporting cartel’s exploitation of inter-city economic warfare.

Reviews

  • Chadwin challenges the Yankee myth head on. musing upon the team's sins, past present, and future. He tackles his topic with a zealotry worthy of any Kennedy conspiracy theorist. If you wore black the day the Dodgers left Brooklyn or wept as Carl Yastrzemski watched Bucky Dent's homer clear the Green Monster, you'll find a kindred soul in these pages.

    New York Times
  • An in-depth look at the litany of Bronx Bomber bummers is long overdue — for Yankee haters and lovers alike. Chadwin provides it, and he gives it good. From their free ride from the media, to their problems with integration, to their symbolism of power, the Yankees are skewered over and over. Good. Let Yankee fans live the examined fife for once.

    Village Voice
  • Chadwin's real originality lies in pointing out how the immigrant's game has been corrupted by big business, big politics and big media.

    The Independent