Season of '42

Joe D, Teddy Ballgame, and Baseball's Fight to Survive a Turbulent First Year of War

By: Jack Cavanaugh

Narrated by: Robert C. Brewster

Before hundreds of major leaguers went off to war, they enjoyed one final season in the sun.

Big league baseball would seem to have been a hard sell in 1942. World War II was not going well for the United States in the Pacific and not much better in Europe. Moreover, the country was in drastically short supply of ships, planes, submarines, torpedoes, and other war materials, and Uncle Sam needed men, millions of them, including those from 21 through 35 years of age who had been ordered to register for the draft, the age range of most big league baseball players.

But after a “green light” from President Roosevelt, major league baseball played on in 1942 as it would throughout the war. It turned out to be an extraordinary season, too, spiced by a brash, young, and swift St. Louis Cardinal team that stunned the baseball world by winning the World Series. The 1942 season would be overshadowed by war, though, with many people wondering whether it was really all right for 400 seemingly healthy and athletic men to play a child’s game and earn far more money than the thousands of young Americans whose lives were at risk as they fought the Germans and Japanese abroad.

In Season of ’42, veteran sportswriter Jack Cavanaugh takes a look at this historic baseball season, how it was shaped and affected by the war and what, ultimately, it meant to America.

©2012 Jack Cavanaugh (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Narration mediocre.

Ok history. Narration so-so. Several mispronunciations. Narrator's voice hard to listen to at times. It seemed there were at least two narrators and they finished each others thoughts or sentences (even though there is only one credited). Annoying but not as much as mispronunciations of words like "contribute", "Spahn" and "Enos".

Great story, narration is like fingernails on a chalkboard!

The narrator sounds like he is reading a news bulletin from the 1940’s. He reads like someone in your face who is trying to make a point and I start leaning back to preserve my personal space. He mispronounces several words, not just named, and over has a very grating performance. I am an hour into this and not sure how much further I can make it. This needs to be heard to be believed.

Narrator is not for me

I couldn’t continue listening, the narrator sounded like he was a headline announcer on every sentence. Not really sure if it was a good story or not.

Why so angry?

I think I might have been able to enjoy this book more with another narrator. I’m actually considering buying the hard copy in like a year and reading it. The narrator is loud and his pacing is odd. It’s like he thinks it’s the ballpark instead of a book. It might be for some but it was terrible for me. I’m actually angry that such an interesting topic was narrated in such a poor fashion.

Awful narrator strikes again

As Mr. Good from North Carolina points out, the narrator speaks as if each sentence is a headline. It kind of masks his numerous mispronunciations.
How much does a narrator get paid per book? Hopefully not a lot because there seems to be more awful narrators than competent narrators. If I were the author, I would get the audio version re-recorded. This is just pure crap.