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

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.

Kahn's most recent work, _Memories of Summer_, is a very thoughtfull look to the golden years of baseball, set in the context of Kahn's childhood and career as a journalist. Simply put, it is a must-have for any serious baseball fan, cultural anthropologist, or anyone else wondering how the game used to be and the importance that it played in the lives of fans. Throughout, Kahn manages to capture, quite superbly, the romanticism of the era, focusing specifically on perhaps the very epitome of that romanticism, the bumbling bums of Brooklyn. He very adequately portrays the love affair that so many in Brooklyn had with the team, as well as give an indication of why they are remembered so reverently today. Kahn also laces his story with his interactions with baseball celebrities, including Leo Durocher, Willie Mays, and Jackie Robinson. My one drawback is that Kahn occasionally gets somewhat preachy when addressing race and racial discrimination during the time. Obviously, a certain amount of preaching is in order, but in my humble opinion it goes a step too far. Otherwise, however, the narrative that Kahn weaves, beginning in his childhood (the relationship with his father and how that relates to baseball is especially noteworthy) and tracing his career in journalism through newspapers and magazines is wonderful, easy to follow, and extremely well-written. I completely agree with the earlier reviewer who commented on the issue of "turning corners" in the book, and I would add one more - expansion to the West Coast and baseball turning the corner to become a two-coast sport. The reader can't help but feel the sorrow and bitterness that is left following the move of the Dodgers to California. This is a fantastic composition, a true gem by one of America's premier sports writers. Happy reading!

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.

The most poignant scene in Kahn's remarkable book occurs about a third of the way through--in the bottom of the third inning, say. Kahn is talking baseball with his father, a college professor and an intelligent fan, a former semipro player from whom the son learned everything he knew about baseball through childhood and adolescence. But now things are different--the son, still in his early 20s, is a newspaper beat writer for the pennant-winning Brooklyn Dodgers. He is a rookie at his craft, but he realizes as his father talks that he already understands more about the game--from a single season spent in daily conversation with big leaguers--that any intelligent fan can from a life's long-distance observation. A torch has been passed, though not willingly, not without some struggle. A corner has been turned.Turning corners--the geometric imperative of baseball itself--is the dominant metaphor of the book: the son turns an Oedipal corner and supplants the father; the all-white game turns the corner and runs smack into Jackie Robinson; the eternally frustrating Bums turn a corner into the eternally invoked "next year"; and sportswriting turns a corner from gritty newsprint to the glossy magazines. None of the turns is made with the facility of a swift base runner rounding the bag; advances, rather, come a labored base at a time, the game and the world forced up a grudging ninety feet by the forces of history.What is--or seems, at least--effortless is the elegant flow of Kahn's prose, like Mays gliding back to snag Wertz's blast, then whirling in a single slinging motion, getting the ball back to the infield to save a run, a game, a World Series--a precious fragment of what keeps the game improbably, miraculously pure. Anyone who is fed up with wild cards and designated hitters and stadium names drawn from the stock listings must read this book. For a moment, at least--for the span of a summer afternoon, eyes asquint, the field excruciatingly green--you, like Kahn at the end, can turn one last corner and return home.

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