He contrasts the teams nicely: the Cards a team with young talent brought along by Keane's teaching hand, the Yankees a team of fading and aging superstars, held together by Yogi's confidence in his former teammates and easy-rider approach to clutch games.

He opens with a quote from George Romney (Mitt's father) speaking about the fate of General Motors: 'There is nothing more vulnerable than entrenched success.' The Yankees, of course, were the General Motors of baseball, the Cardinals had once been Ford to their GM, before New York's three teams took over domination of baseball just after WWII. While Halberstam's book, which was published in 1994, gives a good account of the surprising regular season (in which both teams could've been counted out, and don't forget the Phillies' remarkable collapse) as well as the Series (remember, these were the glorious days before interminable wild cards and playoff series) he has wider concerns. It was the end of the New York Yankee dynasty: the St Louis Cardinals beat the Yankees in seven games, the Yankees fired manager Yogi Berra (you can link to my obituary of Yogi here) and hired the Cardinals' Johnny Keane and began a tailspin that lasted until George Steinbrenner in the 70s created the Bronx Zoo teams and instituted a policy of buying the best players from the teams that beat New York. While I watched bits of the World Series, getting into November, which had a great ending as Kansas City beat the Mets, I was also reading a World Series book, David Halberstam's account of the Series in 1964.

October 1964 by David Halberstam