There is no comparing this little book with the great Halberstam volumes that made his reputation, whether on politics or sports, but then, that's not the point. This is as much a book about friendship as it is about baseball. It just so happens that for many baseball fans - especially Red Sox fans - the friendship in question is of added interest, since the man in decline with age, around whom the others gather, and hit the road to go visit in Florida, is the great Ted Williams, ornery at times, sure, but generous to his friends and many others and a true genius of the art of hitting a baseball. Halberstam lovingly sketches the dynamics that made the foursome of Williams, Johnny Pesky, Bobby Doerr and Dom DiMaggio, former Red Sox teammates, close like family over so many decades. I found the glimpses of Dom DiMaggio calling Ted every day late in his life to give him that day's Red Sox score moving and memorable. I also found the reflections on aging and decline quite powerful, and poignant in light of the fact that David Halberstam, one of our finest writers this last half century, died in a car accident in California in 2007, just four years after the THE TEAMMATES was published, Halberstam's last baseball book. Late in the slim volume, he writes: "Growing old in America, the country of the young, is never easy, not even for those who have been successful in their lives and can afford the best medical care."