The Boys of Summer

The original Dodgers

One of the first books I ever read, The Boys of Summer, is a baseball classic written by Roger Kahn, published in 1972. The book was probably my father's, as he was a Dodger fan as a young man. Even now, at 83, my father can recite the Dodgers lineup, position by position, complete with colorful anecdotes about each player. I often wondered how a poor boy from western Kansas grew up to be a Dodger fan. Understand in those days, television was a rarity, and televised games rarer yet. A lot of poor families didn’t even own a television. They would often go to town on Saturday evenings, where crowds would gather in front of the appliance store to catch a glimpse of whatever program was on the screen. The World Series was televised for the first time in 1947. That was two years after World War II ended. Up to that point, radio was the king.

St. Louis was home to the westernmost teams in the United States. Over the years, I’ve heard the stories many times of my father’s reaction when Bobby Thomson hit his “shot heard ‘round the world” home run to defeat the Dodgers in 1951. Dad was listening to the game on the radio, and like many young Dodgers fans, shed some tears over the crushing defeat. I understood his grief twenty-five years later, when Chris Chambliss hit a home run to vanquish the Royals. There’s nothing quite like young heartbreak doled out by baseball. I’ve heard the story of how he snuck his radio into school and with the help of an earpiece, listened to the Dodgers play in the World Series. My father was welcomed to adulthood in 1958 when the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles. He eventually became a fan of the Kansas City Athletics, and like father, like son, in 1969, we became fans of the newly established Royals. Dad never rooted for the Dodgers or the Athletics again but still watches the Royals every night.

Recently, I re-read The Boys of Summer. I’m not sure how many times I’ve read the book over the years. At least five, probably more. It’s a dog-eared copy and somewhere during one of my readings, I’ve highlighted several key passages of which I have no recollection of doing. On this read, I really “got” the book. It’s funny how the words strike you differently when you’re 11. Or 24. Or 40. Or 63. Same book, different understanding.

Maybe you’ve read the book. If not, and you’re looking for an excellent baseball read, you can do much worse than Boys of Summer. Kahn spent two seasons covering the Dodgers as a sportswriter with the New York Herald-Tribune. The Herald-Tribune was part of a grand group of New York newspapers, back in an age when newspapers were the chief sources of news and Kahn was one of the best. His columns competed with other sports titans of the day like Dick Young and Red Smith at a time when New York was the self-proclaimed capital of the universe.

The book details Kahn’s early life and his attempts to play ball with his father. It explores topics of death (his live-in grandfather) and his introduction to the adult world of sex, courtesy of Olga the maid and from Dodger outfielder Dick Williams, who later played for the Kansas City Athletics.

Kahn gives ample coverage to his seasons traveling with, and reporting on the team. It was a unique time in history, as the reporters of the day traveled with and usually stayed in the same hotels as the players they were covering. They ate meals together, played cards, and drank together. Travel was done most often by train, so there was time to get to know these players as individuals.

Kahn covers the careers and their lives after baseball of thirteen of the Boys of Summer. His time as a Brooklyn reporter overlaps one of the most significant periods in major league history, the integration of baseball with Jackie Robinson. Kahn and Robinson developed a close friendship over the years and Kahn does yeoman’s work in detailing the challenges Robinson and his family faced during his Dodger years.

The Dodgers of this era were a great team and a forward-thinking team. In addition to being the first to integrate in 1947, they were the team who employed the most black players. Besides Robinson, Roy Campanella, Joe Black, Don Bankhead, Don Newcombe, Sandy Amoros, John Roseboro and Junior Gilliam became key contributors. Their hated cross-town rival, the New York Giants, were also an early adopter of integration, with Monte Irvin, Hank Thompson, and very soon, a brilliant young outfielder named Willie Mays. The Dodgers, under the direction of Branch Rickey, also built up a formidable farm system. By contrast, the New York Yankees did not break the color barrier until the 1955 season with former Kansas City Monarch Elston Howard.

Robinson was very astute in his predictions about future race relations, something I never picked up in earlier readings. I was a little disheartened by Robinson’s attitude towards Roy Campanella. Campy was a phenomenal ballplayer. He started playing in the Negro Leagues at the age of 15 and didn’t make his major league debut until he was 26. He ended up winning three MVP awards and was an eight-time All-Star. He was also a jovial man, unlike Robinson, who burned with the intensity needed of someone who was the first. Campanella would often pick up and return an opposing catcher’s face mask after hitting a foul ball. Today this is a common courtesy, not only shared by opposing catchers, but also many opposing players.

Robinson was a fierce competitor and didn’t like this. This led him to say to Kahn that “Roy has a little Uncle Tom in him”. I understand Jackie Robinson’s take. He had to overcome many obstacles in his life, such as the sham military trial for insubordination, to say nothing of enduring the taunts and threats of the racists he encountered in nearly every city and ballpark. Campy was also considered as the player who might be chosen to break the color barrier, and one must wonder what that might have looked like. Kahn does a great job of letting us see the real people when they aren’t wearing the uniform. Campanella as you know, was later paralyzed in a horrific car accident, yet somehow retained his jovial spirit.

I was also amazed at how many of the Dodgers served during World War II. Nine of the thirteen profiled in the book served their country. Pee Wee Reese and Carl Furillo lost three years of their prime. Third baseman Billy Cox lost four. Gil Hodges returned to the States with a Bronze Star. Furillo came back with three battle stars and a Purple Heart. Cox came back a broken man with a severe case of PTSD.

Five of the Dodgers were elected to the Hall of Fame: Robinson, Hodges, Reese, Campanella, and Duke Snider.

Another major difference that has arisen over the years is the stark contrast on how ballplayers live in the offseason and in retirement. When I first read the book in 1972, players’ salaries were much smaller, and guys often worked other jobs in the offseason. If you lived in a major league city at that time, you probably knew where a ballplayer lived. They lived among the fans. My friend David, who grew up in Milwaukee, remembers where many of the Braves lived, some on the same block as he did. The same surely was true of Brooklyn, Kansas City, St. Louis and other major league cities. Today, it’s different. Players earn enough so that they can work out year-round. They live in gated communities in Florida or Arizona in the off-season. We know of them, we cheer for them, but they’re not one of us.

Once the Boys of Summer retired from baseball, all of them went to work at what we would call “normal” jobs. Some taught school and coached. Joe Black worked as an executive for Greyhound. Furillo installed elevator doors in the World Trade Center. That has an entirely different meaning today than it did last time I read the book. Billy Cox tended the bar at his hometown VFW. Preacher Roe ran a grocery store in West Plains, Missouri. And speaking of Roe, what a character that guy was. Back in the 1940s and early 50s, it was possible for a player to go undiscovered until an ambitious scout spotted him, or he showed up at a regional tryout camp. The days when a country bumpkin would suddenly appear and cause a stir as a player are over. Nearly every kid today has access to the internet, cable TV and a cell phone. A few years ago, I was driving through a slum in a Mexican city. I could have driven down the street in a chariot of fire and no one would have noticed. Why? Everyone sitting on a stoop or standing on a street corner had their head down in their smartphone. Every. Single. Person. So yeah, the days of someone “country” coming out of nowhere are over.

Today’s young ballplayers are identified early and funneled into AAU and travel teams. High School baseball is once again hot. Even my small high school, which now plays eight-man football and is heading towards six-man, has a thriving high school baseball team. Today’s twelve-year-olds play more games in one summer than I played in my entire six-year youth career.

Like all dynasties, the Brooklyn dynasty came to an end when the moving trucks headed west. Dodger owner Walter O’Malley had proposed plans for a domed stadium that would have kept the Dodgers in Brooklyn but was unable to hurdle his political opponents. Playing in a beloved but crumbling stadium that only seated 34,000 fans was not going to generate the cash needed to stay competitive. And when Los Angeles offered land for a new stadium, O’Malley took the money and ran. The Giants joined the exodus, moving to San Francisco, also for the 1958 season, and the golden age of New York baseball was over crushing the souls of a million New Yorkers in the process.

All the Boys of Summer are gone now. Hodges was the first, falling to a massive heart attack on April 2, 1972, while managing the Mets. Jackie Robinson threw out the first pitch of the 1972 World Series, then died of a heart attack just a few weeks later, on October 24. Carl Erskine was the last living Boy of Summer, until his death on April 16, 2024, at the age of 97. Rachel Robinson, Jackie’s widow, a beautiful and classy lady, survives. She turned 102 this year.

Each of us has a “Boys of Summer” baseball team. Maybe yours was the 1985 Royals. Or the 2015 team. Or the group we are enjoying this summer. It’s not so much about the baseball team as it is the feeling about that time in your life. For my father, it was the 1955 Dodgers. Mine was the 1977 Royals. You can have more than one Boys of Summer team. Another of mine is the 1984 Chicago Cubs. Weird, right? That August I had moved back into my parent's basement, literally, in between jobs. I found a temporary job selling men’s clothes for a wonderful couple, Cliff and Wanda Asling. Cliff had a small TV, black and white, perched on the top of a shelf. In order to change the channels, we’d have to stand on a stepladder. In the mornings, Wanda would have it to The Today Show, or the Price is Right. In the afternoon, if it was slow in the store, Cliff would tune into WGN and we’d watch the Cubs. Understand that cable TV was a fairly recent advancement. When I’d left for college just a few years earlier, we were lucky to get the three major networks on our antenna-driven TV. Now here we were, watching baseball on a Tuesday afternoon! Cliff and I bonded over those Cubs who were charging towards their first playoff berth since 1945. It seems like that team won a lot of late, close games and the soundtrack of Harry Carey just added to the aura. That remains one of the best four months of my life.

If you’re looking for something to do this offseason, after our Boys of Summer compete in the playoffs, you should read (or re-read) this classic.