This is a book about young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and then went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the team that broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is a book by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. This is a book about what happened to Jackie, Carl Erskine, Pee Wee Reese, and the others when their glory days were behind them. In short, it is a book about America, about fathers and sons, prejudice and courage, triumph and disaster, and told with warmth, humor, wit, candor, and love.
"At a point in life when one is through with boyhood, but has not yet discovered how to be a man, it was my fortune to travel with the most marvelously appealing of teams." Sentimental because it holds such promise, and bittersweet because that promise is past, the first sentence of this masterpiece of sporting literature, first published in the early '70s, sets its tone. What follows only gets better, deeper, more sentimental, and more bittersweet. The team, of course, is the mid-20th-century Brooklyn Dodgers, the team of Robinson and Snyder and Hodges and Reese, a team of great triumph and historical import composed of men whose fragile lives were filled with dignity and pathos. Roger Kahn, who covered that team for the New York Herald Tribune, makes understandable humans of his heroes as he chronicles the dreams and exploits of their young lives, beautifully intertwining them with his own, then recounts how so many of those sweet dreams curdled as the body of these once shining stars grew rusty with age and battered by experience. It is the rare sports book that cannot be contained by the limitations of its genre; it is equal parts journalism, memoir, social history, and poetry.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Hall of Fame Book:
The genius of Roger Kahn's THE BOYS OF SUMMER is that it ultimately isn't about baseball. It is about the character of a group of men who magically matched the character of a place. The greatness of these Dodgers, the greatness of Brooklin was their perseverance in the face of defeat. And that, according to Kahn, is what makes them enduringly great. A must read. Deserves its reputation as a classic.
The Great American Game:
Baseball is integrated into the national consciousness unlike any sport. Football may be our most popular sport now, but baseball is intrinsically linked to our past and our future. The Boys of Summer is a semi-biographical tale of Mr. Kahn as a young reporter embedded with the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950's. Written in a whimsical style befitting America's Past Time, Kahn weaves a complex tale of Jackie Robinson's Dodgers, experiencing everything from blind racism in the South, racial tension among... more info
We are all "Boys of Summer".:
How often do you read a book that you don't want to end? "The Boys of Summer" is one of them. How often do you read a book at exactly the right time in your life, at a time when you are the most in tune with what the book is really about? For me, "The Boys of Summer" and I have met at just the right time. It's not like I've been unaware of this book. Being a baseball fan, it's presence is just about as constant as it could ever be. As a lifelong New York Yankees fan, "The Boys of Summer" has... more info
Absolute classic:
The reason I gave this book five stars is because I'm not allowed to give it six. This is simply the best baseball book I've ever read, and that's a fairly long list. I can't say enough positive things about this book. It should be noted that I was a sports writer for 8 years and was early in my career when I read this book. I was enthralled by the first part of the book, which not only provided insight into two prototypical Brooklyn Dodgers seasons (great team, fell short of winning a championship),... more info
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