Customer Reviews

The Forever Boys

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I was surprised that this book didn't make Sports Illustrated's recent (12/02) list of the top 100 sports books. I've read three or four of Golenbock's better known titles - this one was the best. Intriguing mix of laughs and bitter memories on the part of a group of over-35 ballplayers who were given one more desperate chance to play professionally (about a dozen years ago).

Peter Golenbock, best known as the author of the definitive oral histories of several Major League Baseball teams (most notably the Dodgers, Red Sox, Cubs, and Stengel-era Yankees), swings for the fences and misses, with a book about the short-lived Senior League of 1989-1990.

The Senior League, a failed experiment since consigned to the "amnesia" portion of baseball's memory, established 8 teams in Florida and filled the rosters with 35-and-over major-league castoffs. The bulk of "The Forever Boys" tells their stories. Nearly every story sounds the same: Drugs. Alcohol. Injuries. Myopic management. All the stories are told in an omniscient voice, with phrases so cliched and hackneyed, they rise to the level of "VH1's Behind the Music" art-kisch.

"Forever Boys" is most memorable, perhaps, if you came of baseball age between 1976 and 1983. In the book are the life stories of Pat Zachry and Gary Rajsich, both of whom played in the first baseball game I ever went to. I recognized all the names from my late '70s Topps baseball card collections. Golenbock is at his best when the stories don't have happy endings -- the fall from grace of Sammy Stewart is perhaps the book's most effective writing.

But for every objective look at why a player failed, there are another ten instances of poor research (when Golenbock states that the 1981 Brewers had the best record in baseball before the strike, take out your pencil, cross it out, and write "tenth-best" in the margin. Go ahead!) or subjective reporting. Every game won in the Senior League is a test of wills, or a validation of an entire career, and the screening of Tom Hanks in "BIG" on the team bus becomes an epiphany worthy of James Joyce. Or not.

"Forever Boys" is an excellent source of anecdotes, but is not a keeper for your all-time collection.

I was surprised that this book didn't make Sports Illustrated's recent (12/02) list of the top 100 sports books. I've read three or four of Golenbock's better known titles - this one was the best. Intriguing mix of laughs and bitter memories from a group of over-35 ballplayers who were given one more desperate chance to play professionally.