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What: “Tales from Baseball’s Golden Age”

Author: Gene Fehler

Publisher: Sports Publishing Inc., $19.95

In the bare-knuckle world of 1940s and 1950s baseball, a generation of men who had survived the Great Depression and World War II played the game with the vigor and purpose that often seems lost today. Gene Fehler, a South Carolina writer, compiled the best of 56 interviews with former players of the era.

Fehler’s subjects make this sentimental journey a success. In the last years before major league baseball on the West Coast and expansion, the images of the players such as Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio remain fresh to the men who played against them.

Johnny Berardino spoke of treasuring a scar on his ankle received when DiMaggio spiked him. Red Sox second baseman Bobby Doerr recalled watching then unknown Williams, fresh out of high school, hit for the first time.

Tommy Byrne, a pitcher for the Yankees in the 1950s, fondly recalled the chatterbox catcher, Yogi Berra, who would “talk to (hitters) about anything. It was like he hadn’t seen them in six weeks.”

Jerry Coleman, the Yankee infielder of the 1950s, recalled the “bad week” of pitchers he faced in the American League: “You know what a bad week was? This was a bad week: (Virgil) Trucks, (Fred) Hutchinson, (Hal) Newhouser, (Bob) Lemon, (Bob) Feller, (Early) Wynn, (Mike) Garcia. We always played Detroit and Cleveland back-to-back.”

Fehler’s book achieves what it sets out to do, recalling the era in nostalgia, without the heavy hand of a historian.

John Klima