Reviewed by Whit Sheppard

Sport has long provided a window on wider societal ills like avarice, selfishness and excessive hubris. In examining the 1939 New York Yankees through a contemporary lens, Wall Street Journal staffer Richard Tofer’s A Legend in the Making confirms anew that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Yesterday’s ballplayers were driven by the same forces of ego and ambition as the Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosas of today. The difference is, in 1939, you didn’t read about it in your morning paper.

The ’39 Yankees and their brethren were protected by a fawning media invested in perpetuating the myth of The Great American Ballplayer. America was edging its way out of the Depression, and ball-field exploits served the vital civic function of raising battered spirits. America’s sportswriters were the myth-makers, quite willing to overlook their subjects’ peccadilloes.

In Tofer’s work, we observe Lou Gehrig being brought down by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease that took first his life, and then his name. We learn that Gehrig was thought to be none-too-smart, his saving grace being that "he never made the same mistake twice," and that a cruise-ship incident involving Babe Ruth and Gehrig’s wife forever strained the teammates’ relationship.

These interesting tidbits aside, the book suffers in comparison with baseball works like David Halberstam’s Summer of ’49 and October, 1964 that extrapolate successfully from a particular narrative focus. Tofer touches briefly on the global issues but fails to convey a deeper understanding of the forces that created the Yankee legend.