Me and Dimaggio

All real baseball fans can conjure up the moment the game first cast its spell on them. For Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, it came through the static of the radio, spurring his imagination to witness vividly a three home-run performance in the late 1940s by the great Joe DiMaggio. Cut to half a lifetime later: Lehmann-Haupt, a New York Times book critic, decides to set off on a year-long journey into the heart of America's national pastime. Less intent on recapturing that first moment as on exploring the game's sometimes mystical and continual appeal, he follows a season from spring training to winter meetings. Me and DiMaggio is memoir cloaked in reportage, a tricky melding of genres that's never quite sure whether it's journal or journalism. Still, there are so many good insights into the game here--and a fascinating, if oddly sad, encounter with the elusive DiMaggio himself--that if Lehmann-Haupt doesn't quite reach the fences, he at least gets himself into scoring position.