When I was 16, a friend named Ted recommended The Boys of Summer and the book just blew me away. I was already interested in journalism and the way Roger Kahn married the everyday rigours of sportswriting to the romance of (and rigours) of baseball struck me.
It is a beautifully written book that chronicles his experience covering the 1953 Brooklyn Dodgers as a reporter and follows this with an update on the players' lives in 1970.
He looked them up, wherever they'd retired & wrote a chapter on how their lives had turned out after their careers had ended.
This book blew my mind. Here was a regular guy who just woke up and became a reporter one day? Sure, he could write and had studied English but that was it. That's all he had to do to be a writer. I couldn't believe it. Just like that?
The players themselves also blew my mind. This was some team.
In 1947, the Dodgers and Jackie Robinson had broken the colour barrier that prevented blacks from playing baseball in the big leagues. Many of the same players remained on the team in 1953 and Kahn's description of these Gods in cleats, even if the subsequent description described cleats of clay, was wondrous.
It was also a brilliant period in post-war America, brimming in pride from victory in WWII and not tinged by the self-doubt of Vietnam to follow. By 1970, the narrative shifts to include the Civil Rights issues, poverty & came to light in the 60s. The contrast between the two eras is sharp and the prose is crisp but wonderfully descriptive.
I was hooked.
I finished high school and enrolled in journalism school where I enjoyed myself beyond words but by the time graduation came along, life got in the way. One thing led to another and I ended up in a kind of self-manufactured version of the family business. Though, I love my work, I still get the occasional tinge of wonder at what might have happened had I stayed in journalism.
My elephantine e-reader has rekindled (see what I did there?) my interest in all sorts of books and this past week I just reread The Boys of Summer.
My goodness.
I really had no idea how good it was when I was 16.
So many impressions roared past me as I read: the reporter, who seemed so very grown up to me when I first read the book, is actually 24 years old at the outset. He was a baby.
Speaking of age, when he visits them in retirement most of the players are younger than I am now. Many of the guys were in their early 40s and only a couple were more than the 45 I will hit next week.
And they were done. Their lives, while not over, had almost certainly peaked in their minds.
I'm 45 and I'm just now starting to figure out up from down.
Who knows? I may even live long enough to give writing a try one day.
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