We Would Have Played for Nothing: Baseball Stars of the 1950s and 1960s Talk About the Game They Loved

An All-Star lineup of former major leaguers remembers what baseball was like in the 1950s and 1960s. Whitey Ford, Duke Snider, Carl Erskine, Bill Rigney, and Ralph Branca tell stories about baseball in New York when the Yankees dominated and seemed to play either the Dodgers or the Giants in every World Series. By the end of the fifties, the two National League teams had relocated to California, as baseball expanded across the country. Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts, Braves mainstay Lew Burdette, home-run king Harmon Killebrew, Cubs slugger Billy Williams, and Hall of Famers Brooks Robinson and Frank Robinson share great stories about milestone events, from Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier on the field to Frank Robinson doing the same in the dugout. They remember the teammates and opponents they admired, including Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Warren Spahn, Don Newcombe, and Ernie Banks.

For anyone who grew up watching baseball in the 1950s and 1960s, or for anyone who wonders what it was like in the days when ballplayers negotiated their own contracts and worked real jobs in the off-season, this is a book to cherish.

The second volume of former Commissioner of Baseball Fay Vincent's oral-history project -- the first was The Only Game in Town -- this rich work records Vincent's own interviews with 11 major league stars from the 1950s and '60s talking about their careers and their fellow competitors. Included are interviews with the Hall of Famers Whitey Ford, Brooks Robinson, Harmon Killebrew, Billy Williams, Robin Roberts, Duke Snider, Ralph Branca, Carl Erskine, Bill Rigney, Lew Burdette, and Frank Robinson.

Publishers Weekly

Vincent's second volume of interviews with ballplayers hearkens to a time when kids played baseball all day (with only a break for lunch), annual salaries for professional players rarely reached six figures and the color barrier was only recently broken by Jackie Robinson. Robinson's legacy looms large in the 11 accounts featured here; in one of the book's more touching passages, late New York Giants shortstop Bill Rigney laments failing to introduce himself after the Brooklyn Dodger slugged his first big-league home run against the Giants in 1947. Elsewhere, Duke Snider recalls playing in the final game at Ebbets Field before the Dodgers moved west, and Carl Erskine reveals that players back then didn't bother to read their contracts. Author and former baseball commissioner Vincent records verbatim his subjects' comments, preserving each player's characteristic mannerisms but encouraging digression; that said, everybody questioned has remarkably detailed memories and plenty of opinions on today's game. This is a vivid, entertaining read for anyone old enough to remember Whitey Ford, Lew Burdette and Billy Williams, and an informative insider's history for a new generation of fans.
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Fay Vincent is a former entertainment and business executive who served as the commissioner of baseball from 1989 to 1992.  He is the author of The Last Commissioner: A Baseball Valentine and two volumes in a baseball oral history series, The Only Game in Town and We Would Have Played for Nothing.  He divides his time between Williamstown, Massachussetts, and Vero Beach, Florida.