The Boys Of Summer [Paperback]

The book is neatly split into two parts. The first is a reporter's account of his own love of baseball, specifically the Brooklyn Dodgers, while growing up there. The era comes alive with descriptions of his neighborhood, of the city, of what baseball meant to kids at that time.
Of how baseball bonded fathers to sons, children to adults, neighbors.
In that scenario, imagine the fortune of this young reporter who gets the dream job to end all dream jobs: follow the Dodgers.
You get to watch baseball, played by your favorite team and then write about it. And get paid!
It's a lovely evocation of the time...things aren't like the way they used to be. The earth doesn't stop rotating when the Dodgers come back in the bottom of the ninth.
It used to.
You get a sense of how important and vital the Dodgers were to that community. Daily conversations were incomplete without a mention of last night's game. Stickball was everything. A glove was gold.
The parts about being a member of the press in Manhattan for a big newspaper are terrific. I swear I could hear the chattering typewriters, the traffic outside the window, the tinkling of ice in a bar glass...you are there. As the golden era of baseball was ending, so was an era of newspapers. Soon TV would supersede the papers as the way to get your news. The influence of the newspapers on public opinion (and vice versa) would never again reach the heights they did here.
As history, there is no better concise snapshot of that hallowed Jackie Robinson era than this book.

The second half of the book has Mr. Kahn travelling around the country decades after the Brooklyn team has ceased to exist. He finds the players...Gil Hodges, Jackie, Pee Wee, Duke, Clem, Erskine, Billy Cox...and gives us a separate little chapter on each player. We find out what has happened after baseball for them, Campanella's injury, Robinson's and Erskine's family problems, if they stayed with baseball (Hodges) or got completely away from it (Cox)...
...it finishes the story of that Brooklyn Dodger team. It also gives Mr. Kahn a chance to return to that era and write about it from the perspective that age and time will frequently offer.

If you love baseball, and you love to read, there is no better book. Sure, an argument could be made for a Halberstam book, or someone's well written autobiography, but they would be coin flips.
"The Boys of Summer" may arguably be equalled, but I doubt if it will ever be bettered.

Sit back and let Roger Kahn take you on a trip to Brooklyn in the 1950s. It's part baseball, part memoir, and a part Americana that is likely gone forever. The book is a moving tribute to the Brooklyn Dodgers and the city in which they played. It's all about a special relationship between the team, the city, and its fans. Some critics argue the book is self-indulgent, imposing too much of Kahn's personal life onto the baseball story. I would argue that Kahn is part of the story. He is not only writing about the Dodgers' and their fans, he is a Dodgers fan. There is no way the author could write an emotional tribute without the emotions.

Pay special attention to the detail in Kahn's account. He is a baseball reporter before the internet and ESPN, when an fan's only real contact with the team came from newspapers and radio. His access to the Dodgers is remarkable and his detail spot-on. You follow the team and its players through all the emotional ups and downs of two major league baseball seasons. You go inside the game, as seen from the Dodgers' locker room, with a team that is on the forefront of racial integration. Finally, you visit the Dodgers again after the game ends. The players are grown up, grown old and have re-entered the real world. It is Kahn's continuing tribute to those players that meant so much to Brooklyn and the team. The Boys Of Summer is a book about being a baseball fan written by a baseball fan! It's all about respecting the game and appreciating the players who play it. Baseball fans will not be disappointed.

Having reread the book I was struck by how much I enjoyed the first part of the book which functions as an autobiography of the authors youth. The parts about his father and mother were very poignant. The reveleation about the importance of a simple game in people's relationships hit close to home.

The second part of the book deals with the players and their stories. Sadly so many of these men have now passed away Robinson, Hodges, Reese, and Campanella. Their stories are powerful but what was even more fascinating to me were the stories of the lesser known players. Billy Cox working in a bar, Carl Furillo working as a labourer, and especially the story of Carl Erskine and his mentally disabled son Jimmy.

I would recommend this book to anybody interested in baseball but I would also urge anybody to read it because it's the story about life, the good and the bad, and the past and the present.