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

The author of The Boys of Summer looks back on the game that shaped his life, and reminds us why baseball truly is the poetry of men and summer. At once an intensely private memoir and the chronicle of the lives of some of Americas most beloved public figures and institutions, Memories of Summer is the story of an era told through one man's experience. Photos. 352 pp. National ads. Author tour. 40,000 print.

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.

Publishers Weekly

Any baseball book from the man who wrote The Boys of Summer is expected to be a treat, but this one is extra-special, for Kahn has crafted an informal mini-autobiography about his early years as a baseball writer. "I saw my first World Series game in 1920, seven years before I was born," Kahn says as he begins to explain his close, yet difficult, relationship with his father, who died in 1953. He recalls boyhood trips to Ebbets Field in Brooklyn with his dad and living in a household where education was valued and the mellow voice of Red Barber on the radio calling a Dolph Camilli home run was a natural. His father, a high school teacher and one of the guiding lights behind radio's Information Please, helped his son secure a position with the New York Herald-Tribune, and pretty soon Kahn was covering the Dodgers of Reese, Robinson, Snider and Campanella. There are terrific profiles: Willie Mays ("The only magic ballplayer of my lifetime"); Carl Furillo telling time ("Two-oh-fucking clock"); and Leo Durocher's love tips ("put your hand on her crotch"). There are also stories of working for Henry Luce at the brand-new Sports Illustrated, recollections of the dry wit of columnist Red Smith and the messy business affairs of a "hustler" named Mickey Mantle. This is a wonderful book that rekindles memories of 1950s baseballa time when baseball was indeed our national pastime. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour. (Apr.)

Roger Kahn is the author of the classic The Boys of Summer and is a visiting lecturer on creative writing at the State University of New York at New Paltz. His books Good Enough to Dream, A Season in the Sun, and The Era, 1947–1957: When the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers Ruled the World are available in Bison Books editions.