The Boys of Summer
Ratings6
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings6
Average rating3.8
"A moving elegy . . . [to] the best team the majors ever saw . . . the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s." — New York Times The classic narrative of growing up within shouting distance of Ebbets Field, covering the Jackie Robinson Dodgers, and what’s happened to everybody since. 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 color 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 about America, about fathers and sons, prejudice and courage, triumph and disaster, and told with warmth, humor, wit, candor, and love.
Reviews with the most likes.
The first half of the book includes rich descriptions about growing up in Brooklyn and loving the Dodgers and then becoming a journalist who covered the great Dodgers teams. The second half of the book involves the author visiting with the players from those great Dodgers teams 20 years later. The epilogue describes some of the initial responses to the book, which were my own feelings: “A newspaper reviewer named Jonathan Yardley had trouble understanding the relationship between the two major sections...Yardley complained, not entirely pleasantly, that I had written two books, not one.” In addition to my confusion about the two sections of the book, I also didn't quite get the point of the book overall, other than to recount memories for the author. I kept expecting him to work his way to some great point, but he never did. However, that isn't to say I didn't enjoy the book. As a huge baseball fan, reading detailed recollections about players and games was enjoyable.
