The Roger Kahn Reader

Most famous for his classic work The Boys of Summer, Roger Kahn is widely regarded as one of the greatest sportswriters of our time. The Roger Kahn Reader is a rich collection of his stories and articles that originally appeared in publications such as Sports Illustrated, theNew York Times, Esquire, and the Nation. Kahn's pieces, published between 1952 and today, present a vivid, turbulent, and intimate picture of more than half a century in American sport. His standout writings bring us close to entrepreneurs and hustlers (Walter O'Malley and Don King), athletes of Olympian gifts (Ted Williams, Stan Musial, "Le Demon Blond" Guy Lefleur), and sundry compelling issues of money, muscle, and myth. We witness Roger Maris's ordeal by fame; Bob Gibson's blazing competitive fire; and Red Smith, now white-haired and renowned, contemplating his beginnings and his future. Also included is a new and original chapter, "Clem," about the author's compelling lifelong friendship with former Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Clem Labine. Written across six decades, this volume shows Kahn's ability to describe the athletes he profiled as they truly were in a manner neither compromised nor cruel but always authentic and up close.

Most famous for his classic work The Boys of Summer, Roger Kahn is widely regarded as one of the greatest sportswriters of our time. The Roger Kahn Reader is a rich collection of his stories and articles that originally appeared in publications such as Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, Esquire, and the Nation. Kahn’s pieces, published between 1952 and today, present a vivid, turbulent, and intimate picture of more than half a century in American sport. His standout writings bring us close to entrepreneurs and hustlers (Walter O'Malley and Don King), athletes of Olympian gifts (Ted Williams, Stan Musial, “Le Demon Blond” Guy Lefleur), and sundry compelling issues of money, muscle, and myth. We witness Roger Maris’s ordeal by fame; Bob Gibson’s blazing competitive fire; and Red Smith, now white-haired and renowned, contemplating his beginnings and his future. Also included is a new and original chapter, “Clem,” about the author’s compelling lifelong friendship with former Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Clem Labine. Written across six decades, this volume shows Kahn’s ability to describe the athletes he profiled as they truly were in a manner neither compromised nor cruel but always authentic and up close.

This is a book about young men who learned to play baseball during the 1930s and 1940s, and then went on to play for one of the most exciting major-league ball clubs ever fielded, the team that broke the colour barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is a book by and about a sportswriter who grew up near Ebbets Field, and who had the good fortune in the 1950s to cover the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. This is a book about what happened to Jackie, Carl Erskine, Pee Wee Reese, and the others when their glory days were behind them. In short, it is a book fathers and sons and about the making of modern America. 'At a point in life when one is through with boyhood, but has not yet discovered how to be a man, it was my fortune to travel with the most marvelously appealing of teams.' Sentimental because it holds such promise, and bittersweet because that promise is past, the first sentence of this masterpiece of sporting literature, first published in the early '70s, sets its tone. The team is the mid-20th-century Brooklyn Dodgers, the team of Robinson and Snyder and Hodges and Reese, a team of great triumph and historical import composed of men whose fragile lives were filled with dignity and pathos. Roger Kahn, who covered that team for the New York Herald Tribune, makes understandable humans of his heroes as he chronicles the dreams and exploits of their young lives, beautifully intertwining them with his own, then recounts how so many of those sweet dreams curdled as the body of these once shining stars grew rusty with age and battered by experience.

The true story of a year in the life of the Utica Blue Sox, a minor league baseball team in upstate New York, by the acclaimed author of The Boys of Summer. Roger Kahn’s The Boys of Summer immortalized the 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers. Good Enough to Dream does the same for players whose moment in the sun has not yet arrived. Here, Kahn tells the story of his year as owner of the Class A, very minor league Utica Blue Sox. Most of the Blue Sox never made it to the majors, but they all shared the dream that links the small child in the sandlot with the superstar who has just smacked one out of the stadium. This is a look at the heart of America’s pastime, a game still sweet enough to lure grown men to leagues where first-class transportation was an old school bus and the infield was likely to be the consistency of thick soup. It is a funny and poignant story of one season, and one special team, that will make us hesitate before we ever call anything “bush league” again. Praise for Roger Kahn “As a kid, I loved sports first and writing second, and loved everything Roger Kahn wrote. As an adult, I love writing first and sports second, and love Roger Kahn even more.” —David Maraniss, Pulitzer Prize winner “He can epitomize a player with a single swing of the pen.” —Time “Roger Kahn is the best baseball writer in the business.” —Stephen Jay Gould, The New York Review of Books

The author of The Boys of Summer explores the golden age of baseball, an unforgettable time when the game thrived as America’s unrivaled national sport. The Era begins in 1947, with Jackie Robinson changing major league baseball forever by taking the field for the Dodgers. Dazzling, momentous events characterize the decade that followed—Robinson’s amazing accomplishments; the explosion on the national scene of such soon-to-be legends as Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Bobby Thomson, Duke Snider, and Yogi Berra; Casey Stengel’s crafty managing; the emergence of televised games; and the stunning success of the Yankees as they play in nine out of eleven World Series. The Era concludes with the relocation of the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, a move that shook the sport to its very roots. “Kahn knows where the bodies are buried and allows his audience a joyous read as he digs them up.”—Publishers Weekly “[Kahn] engagingly captures the flavor of the times by bringing to the fore the defining traits and relationships that added human dimension to the sport.”—Library Journal “Kahn weaves such personal information into his rich descriptions of thrilling regular-season, playoff and World Series games. And in doing so he endows the players, managers and owners with more dynamic dimensions than any baseball writer of his generation. The men in The Era are ballplayers, not deities; and it takes the unerring strength of a straight shooter like Kahn to remind nostalgic baseball fans of that simple fact.”—Chicago Tribune

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 era?Leo 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.

From the author of A Season in the Sun, a memoir from one of America’s foremost sportswriters about his life and influences. After successful seasons as a newspaperman and magazine writer, Roger Kahn burst onto the national scene in 1972 with his memorable bestseller, The Boys of Summer, memorializing the Brooklyn Dodgers. Here he wrote a book for the hearts and minds of his readers. Chronicling his own life, Into My Own is Kahn’s reflection on the eight people who shaped him as a man, a father, and a writer. Into My Own is the touching memoir of an unassuming man, whose great love of baseball and literature led him into extraordinary experiences, opportunities, and friendships. Even amidst great family tragedy and personal difficulty, Kahn prevailed—amongst poets, writers, politicians, and most of all, ballplayers. “In this engaging memoir, Kahn…looks back at baseball and much more as he presents his episodic reminiscences as free-form essays arranged loosely around iconic figures from his past…Kahn has a graceful, personal style, full of deftly evoked color and characters, with a bit of the newspaperman's hard-bitten swagger and a two-fisted liberalism one doesn't see much anymore.”—Publishers Weekly Praise for Roger Kahn “As a kid, I loved sports first and writing second, and loved everything Roger Kahn wrote. As an adult, I love writing first and sports second, and love Roger Kahn even more.”—Pulitzer Prize winner, David Maraniss “A work of high moral purpose and great poetic accomplishment. The finest American book on sports.”—James Michener on The Boys of Summer “Kahn has the almost unfair gift of easy, graceful writing.”—Boston Herald

Jackie Robinson changed the face of baseball and captured the attention and hearts of America in 1947. "The Jackie Robinson Reader" gathers writings that demonstrate the cultural impact of Robinson's actions and the life of the man himself. 8-page photo insert.