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Memories of Summer : When Baseball Was an Art and Writing About it a Game
Memories of Summer When Baseball Was an Art and Writing About it a Game Author:Roger Kahn From Kirkus Reviews — Kahn, dean of American sportswriters, shares his memories of a time when baseball players and writers were not the servants of different corporate masters and the game itself was not a virtual hostage to corporate or political interests. Growing up in Brooklyn during the Depression, Kahn acquired his love for the game, and f... more »or the Brooklyn Dodgers, from his father, Gordon. Ever the runners-up, the Dodgers were nevertheless a part of the warp and woof of Brooklyn life. Beginning as a copyboy at the now defunct New York Herald Tribune, Kahn eventually caught on with that paper's fabled sports section - home to Red Smith's column - and landed a sports beat in time for the 1952 season. At that time the press seldom violated players' and managers' privacy, primarily because it would have seemed wrong to do so. (However, Giants manager Leo Durocher resorted in some cases to bribery to keep overzealous reporters "honest.") Kahn was a gifted witness to a golden period, and he captures here what the game was really like in the 1950s and '60s, recounting both the good times and bad. He reveals how alcohol and easy camaraderie made responsible reporting difficult but fun; how racism kept many worthy players off the field and many worthy columns off the sports pages; and he gives readers a fly-on-the-wall view of the birth and infancy of Sports Illustrated. His vivid tales of some of the remarkable but less familiar players remind us that, in baseball as in life, numbers seldom tell the whole story. As ever, Kahn is earthy, forceful, graceful, and seldom sentimental. Rather than take potshots at today's much altered game and players, he reminds us clearly of what baseball used to be, and allows us to come to our own conclusions. Simply put, this is a marvelous book.
By focusing on the game rather than the players - or, rather, by focusing on the players only to a degree that they were part of the game - journalists like Roger Kahn come closer to producing literature, albeit in a hurry, than any sports-writers we are likely to see again. - The New York Times Book Review, Allen Barra
"Simply put, this is a marvelous book." -Kirkus Reviews
"Kahn is a master at evoking a sense of the past. Here he offers a pleasing potpourri of autobiography, professional memoir, and anecdotal baseball history." -Booklist
"This is powerful stuff... Primal and difficult to articulate, but Kahn does, in a spare and admirably understated way." -Philadelphia Inquirer
"A grand slam." -Business Week
Product Description
A sports journalist reminisces about the days of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Babe Ruth, and Willie Mays, when writers hung out with ball players, before the days of agents and publicists. by the author of The Boys of Summer. 40,000 first printing.
From the Inside Flap
"Simply put, this is a marvelous book." Kirkus Reviews
"Kahn is a master at evoking a sense of the past. Here he offers a pleasing potpourri of autobiography, professional memoir, and anecdotal baseball history." Booklist.
Acclaimed baseball writer Roger Kahn gives us a memoir of his Brooklyn childhood, a recollection of a life in journalism, and a record of personal acquaintance with the greatest ballplayers of several eras.
His father had a passion for the Dodgers; his mother's passion was for poetry. Somehow, young Roger managed to blend both loves in a career that encompassed writing about sports for the New York Herald Tribune, Sports Illustrated, the Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, and Time.
Kahn recalls the great personalities of a golden eraLeo Durocher, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, Red Smith, Dick Young, and many more and recollects the wittiest lines from forty years in dugouts, press boxes, and newsrooms. Often hilarious, always precise about action on the field and off, Memories of Summer is an enduring classic about how baseball met literature to the benefit of both.« less