DiMag & Mick: Sibling Rivals, Yankee Blood Brothers

In what Rolling Stone called "an epic The Natural meets The Rookie buddy drama," DiMag & Mick pulls back the curtain on the real, untold story of American pop cultural legends Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle in 1951 as an aging, ailing Joltin' Joe prepares to leave the superstar stage of New York City while The Mick struggles stepping into the hero's cleats at Yankee Stadium -- so raise the curtain on Broadway! "A dream of a book..." -- Chicago Tribune DiMag & Mick is the critically-acclaimed portrait of the two baseball stars by the author whose best-selling Mickey Mantle: American's Prodigal Son has been hailed by The New York Times as the definitive biography of the Yankee switch-hitting slugging icon. Historian Tony Castro, who is also the author of the landmark dual biography Gehrig & The Babe: The Friendship and The Feud, magnificently paints Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle in the pivotal setting of 1951: DiMaggio's farewell season and Mantle's rookie year. The book brings them alive as the old and young exemplars of what was a more confident, masterful age not only in baseball but in the country where they were held up as cultural heroes over two generations, symbolic of an America celebrating its recent triumph over Nazism and ever-curious about the new age of color television, rocket ships, and technology. DiMag & Mick is also the story of fathers and sons, rebels and heroes, and reveals the rite of passage of two men who would go down in baseball immortality - DiMaggio as he reluctantly prepares to leave the spotlight of adoration and hero-worship for glitzy world of Marilyn Monroe's exploding Hollywood celebrity, and Mantle in his awkward attempt to leave his country roots of Dust Bowl Oklahoma for the big city exposure and expectations of greatness being placed on him. Yankee legend and glory holds a special magic all its own, and Castro examines the heart and soul of that mystique, especially the bond of the players themselves and how that came to breed and spread the perception that there was any animosity between DiMaggio and Mantle - two polarizing personalities who drove many teammates away from one and galvanized their friendship with the other. Read more