A review by jeffmauch
The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn

5.0

Easily the best non-fiction sports book I've ever read. Although this was written nearly 50 years ago now, it speaks to a different era in a way few books can pull off years later. This is the baseball of yesteryear, of kids growing up in poverty playing with a stick in the street or rural fields. It's the story of Jackie Robinson, but it's so much more than that. It's really the story of a group of men who grew up in the 30s and 40s wanting nothing more than to play ball and finding themselves on the iconic Brooklyn Dodgers of the early 50s. You may think this would be an uplifting story, but for most its quite sad, yet completely enthralling. The story starts with the author describing his childhood in Brooklyn and how he found a love for the Dodgers and eventually ended up covering them for a paper at a young age. It then covers the years of glory and agony of the late 40s and early 50s for the Dodgers with a lot in depth looks at the players. Jackie Robinson is covered here in a much different way than the mantle we put on him now, but it's only a small part of the story. The second half of the book is the author catching up with a dozen of theses players 10-15 years later after their careers have come to and end and many struggle with the Dodgers years being the best years of their lives. As Ed Linn said, "Sooner or later, society beats down the man of muscle and sweat." This is a moving and captivating look at baseball of another era.