Customer Reviews

Memories of Summer: When Baseball Was an Art, and Writing about It a Game (Bison Book)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mr. Kahn turns back the clock to the days when baseball was the true American pastime. His anecdotes and interviews about Mantle, Mays, and Early Wynn bring these individuals to life more than any statistics possibly could. His love of his father is written about in such a profound manner that is timeless. In all a classic piece of Americana that hopefully will be read fifty years from now.

I was fortunate enough to receive a preview copy of this book a few weeks before its release because I was interviewing Mr. Kahn on a radio interview program.

As soon as I started reading, I was hooked. Although I was not alive during the 1950's, I have always been fascinated with baseball during that era, particularly the lovable Brooklyn Dodgers. Kahn's latest book does such a wonderful job of describing what it was like to be around baseball every day in that bygone era.

The easiest interview I have ever done was that one I did with Roger. His love for baseball was evident from the first question I asked him. His insight gained from covering the Dodgers in the 1950's is something every baseball fan could use. In this season of home runs, the average fan is once again starting to appreciate baseball. Roger Kahn will make you appreciate it even more.

So much has been written about baseball in the 1950s that it takes a special writer to offer something truly new about the subject. Kahn is such a writer. His book includes original essays on Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, essays which offer new perspectives on the two great icons of '50s baseball. And Kahn's look back on his reporting days for the New York Herald-Tribune and the young SPORTS ILLUSTRATED is the best account of the PROCESS of sportswriting yet written. Kahn poignantly recalls how baseball brought him closer to his father and, later, his mother. He closes with a list of his favorite baseball books, certain to stir Hot Stove League discussions for the next few winters. MEMORIES OF SUMMER is a splendid evocation not only of a game, but of the three-dimensional people behind it

In "Memories of Summer," Roger Kahn takes the reader back to a time when the Dodgers were an integral part of the life of a Brooklynite, through his career as a writer for several different newspapers and magazines, up to modern times where he interviews former baseball stars, including Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle, and Willie Mays.

Though he grew up a Dodger fan, forced to wait 'til next year seemingly forever, his love not just for the Dodgers, but for the game, is made manifest through his memoir and his reprinted articles. His painting of baseball in his earlier years as a game engulfed in wonder and mystique is shared by many who cherish old-time baseball.

Kahn is not remiss in placing baseball in the context of the social realm in which it was played--a time where writers were reluctant to write about the off-the-field lives of players and where racism, which barred blacks from playing in the majors for almost 50 years, slowly gave way to integration, very slowly. He saw the Jackie Robinsons and the Willie Mays and the Monte Irvins in Major League Baseball as baseball players, not black baseball players.

This book is funny at times, sad at others, but always piques interest. Kahn does an outstanding job of painting vivid images of a time when baseball truly was an art, and writing about it truly a game.

The flowing pen of author Roger Kahn provides readers with books of nostalgia and heart. Here he covers baseball in New York City in the bygone 1950's, his love affair with the Brooklyn Dodgers (whom he covered as reporter from 1952-1953), plus the Yankees and Giants. Readers learn a few things about Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Leo Durocher, etc. There's the author's take on baseball racism, on the slow retreat in the 1950's. Kahn also traces his upbringing and close relationship with his baseball-addicted father. The book has a definite sense of loss, due to his father's passing, the Dodgers and Giants fleeing to California, and the urban decline that has since afflicted New York and many other once-tranquil cities. This moving book is something of a follow-up to THE BOYS OF SUMMER, the author's superb look at the Brooklyn Dodgers that was published in the early 1970's (this book came out in the late 1990's).

This book doesn't quite match BOYS OF SUMMER, but it's another gem by a writer whose heart clearly belongs to baseball.

Kahn's love of baseball translates with ease onto the page. His written word is superb. Let his stories take you back to a golden age of baseball when the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers ruled the World and Willie Mays owned centerfield. If you love the game of baseball and like a good read. Kahn's fluid tales will highly satisfy. 5 stars!

I had hoped this would be as good as Kahn's outstanding Boys of Summer. I was disappointed. There are some interesting sketches of players and managers here, some anecdotes about baseball, and some tidbits about the evocative time and place in which Kahn grew up, including pervasive anti-Semitsm of his early years. And the book gives a feeling for what "dem bums" meant to to Brooklyn.

Unfortunately much of the rest is boring. Kahn's father is not particularly interesting to anyone but himself, nor is Kahn's relationship with his father. In contrast to Kahn's writing about baseball, his writing about his process of writing about baseball is stupifyingly dull. It just is not that fascinating to learn how he had trouble thinking up a good headline or story lead. Who cares? Give us another anecdote about Willie or Mickey instead. Like so many examples of writers endlessly writing about their process of writing, and film makers endlessly discussing their process of film making, my response was "Who cares?" It is dull and self-indulgent. Produce the damn work--- the story, book, movie, painting or whatever, and let it speak for itself.

After dealing with too much of this navel-gazing, I skimmed the book for information about ballplayers and managers and baseball and ignored all the chaff.

Give it a "5" for 25% of the content, a "1" for 75%.

Let me explain this way: Growing up, I was never a fan of the Dodgers, they were my Giants' rival. This book made me a fan. In fact, this book made me long to be the kind of fan Khan was, want to be a roadie for a team I barely knew of beyond a few big names a week before. It revived my slumped interest in baseball overall, and taught me a lot that I had never considered about the sport.

There's not one place in this book where names and stats are thrown at the reader; every name and every statistic is a story, some seen from the wide eyes of a child and some with the reverence of an adult around his human heroes. Neither is this book a whitewash nor the disillusionment of heroes not living up to their image: Everyone is alive and fresh, everyone has a meticulously researched backstory told with a folksy sense of humor about their all-too-human foibles. Mixed into the stories are comments from the people involved from interviews many years later, when they can look back with more honesty, written in seamlessly. Of course not everyone's stories match - instead of choosing a truth, Khan just lays a few sides out, lets the reader feel some of the disharmony that occasionally shook the teams, without stopping to exhaustively debate the reality of each.

It's very obvious that Khan is an astute master of language, someone who spent fifty years not only writing stories daily but perfecting his craft. The emotion he pours into every page never comes off tacky or trite, it's manly but not chauvinistic, and filled with a lifelong boyish wonder. Most of all, the retelling of each game is something special, breathing life back into an afternoon decades past. He manages to create an incredibly visceral picture of the highs and lows, tossing in more stories to bridge the plays, and inspires plenty of envy. It never gets old, and no technique is overused enough or story long enough to grate.

The book certainly shifts dramatically with the move away from Brooklyn, slows down a bit and comes back to earth as it accelerates through the years, but I never lost interest in it. I wish this book hadn't been stolen from me; someday I'll find it again and finish the last few chapters. I really do want to hear the last word - and then pass it on to another Dodger fan who just doesn't know it yet.

If you like New York baseball, then by all means pick up this wonderful book. A history of the game without being pedantic, and a personal memoir of a guy and his dad, without drowning in sappy nostalgia, Kahn weaves his personal tale of rising through the ranks of childhood dreamer to baseball writer of the Brooklyn Dodgers, with great skill. His writing is top notch, and his insights into the game and the men who played it are fascinating. A perfect summer read.

Kahn has done it again. His prose, from the unique perspective of veteran baseball writer who cares about his subjects, is at once soothing and revealing. Kahn's appreciation for the history that he witnessed - and helped create - is sure to enrich any baseball fan's appreciation of the history (to say nothing of vitally important players both on and off the field) of this great game.