Neil Leifer: Baseball - Ballet in the Dirt

The cover itself reflects an era that will never be repeated: 1) the pitcher (drysdale) completed his game. 2) tthe clock on the scoreborard reveals that he game took barely 2 hours 3) it was a day game world series 4) Drysdale is surrounded by black ballplayers (where did they all go?) 5)All three players essentially spent their entire careers with one team (Dodgers). The ball players look lean and mean-no steroids. Where did we go wrong?

I don't normally goe for books this size,but after looking through the book and the many pictures in it I had to add this to my sports library.Alot of these players pictures I'd never seen before, ballplayers such as Early Wynn,Willie Tasby,Johnny Podres and Jackie Brandt to name a few.All of these pictures were taken by Neil Leifer between 1960-1977 with a couple from the late 50's.Magnificent pictures of Roberto Clemente,Koufax on the mound,and a sequence of photos from a 1976 bench clearing brawl between the Yankees and Red Sox.As an APBA computer sim player these historic photos add more enjoyment to my game.

The images in this book capture an era in baseball history. From the vibrant cover photo to the pictures inside, this is a wonderful book, well worth your time and money. The quality of the book itself is top shelf, the paper is rich and well printed. Thumbs up to Neil Leifer for this great book and to Taschen for doing such a great job publishing it.

It's mind-boggling to think that Neil Leifer was basically a kid when he took most of these pictures. Born in '42, Leifer had shot a great many of these images before he was even 21. (There's a great shot of him sitting with Stan Musial in which he doesn't even look old enough to be the bat boy, much less a professional pohotographer.) Clearly, however, he was a prodigy and a natural, because this book is full of incredible shots. The narrative that goes along with the images isn't always illuminating; if you're a big enough fan of baseball history to be buying a book like this, then you will already know most of what it has to say. But the text is beside the point; it's the pictures that matter, and on that score Leifer is hard to touch in the history of sports photography. Most of the great players of the 50's, 60's, and 70's are represented, in a wealth of B & W images along with amazingly vibrant color shots that capture the sometimes balletic, sometimes violent beauty of this 'pastoral' game (to borrow the popular misnomer, undoubtedly coined by someone who's never seen a collision at the plate up close). For fans of baseball or photojournalism, this is worth every penny.

The book is fascinating, with many pictures never seen before, more interesting the explanations behind the pictures, a collectors item