Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, August 7, 1994                   TAG: 9407310003
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: D4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Reviewed by DAVID LEVIN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BASEBALL, 'MEMPHIS BILL' TERRY AND THE NY GIANTS

When Ted Williams was 12 or 13, like many youthful backyard baseball players, he would announce his games. "It's the last of the ninth, bases loaded, 3-and-2 count." The batter Williams would usually emulate was not Lou Gehrig, Rogers Hornsby, or Babe Ruth; it was `Memphis Bill` Terry, the last National League .400 hitter.

Through Bill Terry's eyes and baseball's timelessness, Peter Williams describes baseball and American life in the early to mid twentieth century. The book is packed with baseball legends - managers: John McGraw, Joe McCarthy, Casey Stengel, Leo Durocher; players: Dizzy Dean, Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gehrig, Carl Hubble, Bob Feller, Leo Gomez, Joe DiMaggio. "When The Giants Were Giants," is not only a detailed look at

Hall of Famer Bill Terry's life, the New York Giants, and baseball legends, it is a look into America - high-times and hard-times.

Baseball's success paralled American life. The "roaring 20s" were a time of prosperity for both. When the Depression hit in the 1930s, baseball suffered along with society. But America's game and society's love for the game, along with America, overcame and survived.

Giant left fielder Joe Moore describes New York in 1932, "I saw street corner after street corner where they had soup kitchens, and the people waiting would be four abreast and the lines would run for several blocks."

Presidents and celebrities are intertwined into the story of Terry and the Giants. President Hoover was poorly received by Washington fans when he threw out the first opening-day pitch after the stock market crash. Three years later during the 1933 World Series, President Roosevelt was driven to his box at Griffith Stadium and threw out the opening pitch to a cheering crowd.

Bill (`Bojangles`) Robinson was also in attendance during the '33 World Series. The dancer told reporter Jack Doyle after the Giants defeated the Senators in game one that he had just won fifteen hundred and forty bucks betting on the game.

The book is full of colorful quotes and stories from ex- baseball players and reporters, both first hand and from newspaper articles of yesterday. Along with Terry, they tell the story. Terry died in 1989, after 20 years

of both playing and managing the New York Giants, but not before Williams spent many hours interviewing him. Terry had a bad reputation as a cold person, but Williams feels that it was not entirely accurate and tries to present an objective picture of him. He writes in the prologue that through his time spent with Terry, "he is anything but the callous, unemotional, mercenary machine he's been made out to be." Terry was a dedicated

family man, who put his family's security above everything else. Through his baseball salary and off-season business dealings, and work after baseball, he amassed a fortune of 30 million dollars at the time of his death.

\ David Levin is a Radford freelance writer.