Halberstam presents the Yankees as a team who is just ending a run of dominance against not only the American League, but also dismantling their National League opponent in the World Series as well. Because of this, the stories of how these two franchises reached the 1964 Series greatly differ. The Cardinals being one of the first teams to fully accept the role of African American players, their stars had much more to face than those with the Yankees who many at that time thought to be privileged. Just looking at the make-up of these names, it is clear that there was something different about the Cardinal stars than there were with the Yankees. The Cardinals were full of famous names as well like Lou Brock, Curt Flood, Bob Gibson, Bob Uecker and Tim McCarver. On the Yankees there were Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford being managed by the ever popular Yogi Berra.

This World Series had a lot of characters even the casual baseball fan would have heard of. The reader quickly finds out, however, that there is much more to this book than its title. Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees. On the surface, October 1964 appears to be about the World Series in 1964 between the St. Don’t let this come as a deterrent to reading Halberstam’s work, because even if you aren’t interested in baseball, but enjoy learning about how different people act in life, this is certainly a book of interest.

Ironically the time period with the least amount of time spent on it in David Halberstam’s book October 1964 would be October 1964.

October 1964 by David Halberstam