The Boys of Summer

As the cover states, The Boys of Summer is "the classical narrative of growing up within shouting distance of Ebbets Field, covering the Dodgers in the Jackie Robinson years...and what's happened to everyone since." While not false, I would say that the emphasis is strongly on the "covering the Dodgers" and "what's happened," with less focus on the growing up in Brooklyn bit. In other words, this is more Mike Royko meets The Summer of Beer and Whiskey than it is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.

Roger Kahn grew up in Brooklyn, in the shadow of Ebbets Field, the son of a man who loved the Dodgers almost more than he loved his family. Roger never had a chance of being anything other than a Dodgers fan. Through luck, happenstance, and hard work, he became the Dodgers beat reporter at the tender age of 24, at which point he hopscotched the country with the likes of Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese in 1952 and 1953. Traveling with an integrated ball club through the Jim Crow South, he learned more than he expected before leaving the assignment after two seasons. These experience comprise the first half of the book.

The second half is the "what's happened" bit, where Kahn criss-crosses the country again, this time by himself, as he visits the former players who have scattered from Connecticut to LA to Middle America. Their stories are fascinating for what they show us about how former athletes used to retire versus how they retire today. Carl Furillo has a job installing elevators in the World Trade Center. Billy Cox is tending bar at an American Legion. A few have gone into business, but none seems to have achieved over-the-top success. Only Gil Hodges is still in baseball. The modesty with which they are living out their lives - and for the most part these are still relatively young men - speaks volumes about how the country and professional sports have changed.

I liked this book. At times Kahn was a little too technical (or, honestly long-winded) in describing specific plays or games, but on the whole this is a book that a layman can read without getting bogged down. I especially enjoyed the passages that focused on journalism in the 1950s - the nuts and bolts of the newsroom and the culture, in particular.

In 1997, Kahn added an afterward where he writes about how the book was originally received in 1972. "Yardley complained, not entirely pleasantly, that I had written two books, not one." When I read that, I thought, "bingo!" The two haves are well-written, certainly, and each is interesting in its own way, but they really do feel like two different books. Unlike Yardley, I'm not convinced this is a complaint, but it was unexpected.

Final verdict: Baseball fans will undoubtedly relish Kahn's work. Non-fans may want to consider what other titles comprise their current reading list and prioritize accordingly.