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

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 327 pages, b&w illustrations. This engaging collection of 11 interviews with some of baseball's best players from the 1950s and 1960s, whose salaries were often less than $10,000, might have been better subtitled, "And, Come to Think of It, We Did" (play for nothing, that is). But those guys could play. Former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent just starts the tape and lets them talk. There's Ralph Branca, alternately bitter and philosophical about the Shot Heard 'Round the World that Bobby Thompson hit off him in 1951; Harmon Killebrew downplaying the monster homers he hit off everybody; Whitey Ford (236-106 lifetime) sharing great Yankee stories; and Brooks Robinson marveling more at his great peers than at his own illustrious career. Other interviewees include Bill Rigney, Duke Snider, Robin Roberts, Carl Erskine, Lew Burdette, Frank Robinson, and Billy Williams. Clean copy.