Book Notes: The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn
The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn - loved it
Brooklyn in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Dodgers when they were in Brooklyn, and later the traumatizing move to Los Angeles… Jackie, Campy, Pee Wee, the Duke, Gil Hodges, Preacher Roe, Clem Labine, and so many more. Kahn writes of their playing days and their lives after as well; lots of midwestern boys in this group. Plus, the stars of the New York Giants - home run hitting, Bobby Thomson, head hunting Sal Maglie, Sid Gordon (father of my high school friend) and Herm Franks (grandfather to our friend Mike). There’s also Leo Durocher, Walter O’Malley, Branch Rickey, and the journalists, Red Smith, Dick Young, Red Barber, and Roger Kahn himself.
These players were truly legends of the game. And baseball in the 1950s is truly a foregone era. The differences between the men who played then and now are monumental, in so many ways, not the least of which is their lives after baseball - they all had to work (bartending, construction, etc.) to make a living after their playing days. As I read, I frequently felt as if I was either in a major-league dugout or in the newsroom of the once great and now defunct Herald Tribune. Heaven!
This is the second book where I have had the experience of feeling that I was talking with my Dad. The first was Summer of ‘49, by David Halberstam (the Yankees and the Red Sox, DiMaggio and Williams, the 1949 American League pennant race). Both are marvelous books to read, particularly during baseball season.
On winning and losing … Roger Kahn on his years covering the Dodgers. “My years with the Dodgers were 1952 and 1953, two seasons in which they lost the World Series to the Yankees. You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat.”
On leaving the team … Clem Labine reflecting on the feeling of leaving the Dodgers when the time came. ”You’re better off. But where are all the guys? Where is everybody you’ve been playing with? You’re not in the fraternity anymore. That’s one of the hardest things.”
On Jackie Robinson …. “Ya want a guy that comes to play,“ suggests Leo Durocher, whose personal relationship with Robinson was spiky. “This guy didn’t just come to play. He came to beat ya. He come to stuff the goddamn bat right up your ass.”
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