Roger Kahn is arguably the greatest sportswriter of my time: since the 50's. In 1972 he published the greatest baseball book of all-time called "The Boys of Summer" about the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950's. Kahn began his journalistic career as a young man in his early 20's cover Brooklyn's Dodgers. In this nostalgic book he tracked down those immortal players like Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Reese, and Duke Snider to find out what had happened to them since the 50's. The result is a treat for all baseball rememberers, even those like me who aren't old enough to remember the Dodgers before they moved to Los Angeles in 1958.
Even though I loved "The Boys of Summer," which I read in 1972 when it was first published, I did not realize how good of a writer Roger Kahn is until I read this compilation of some of his best writing. He says in the preface that he aspired to write literature. That is quite an ambition for a sportwriter. I say he succeeded.
This compilation features excepts from his many books, mostly about baseball, Kahn's true sports love, but the book culls mostly his magazine pieces, profiles of some of the era's greatest sports heroes.
His profile of Willie Mays fits in nicely with the Mays biography I read recently. There are snapshots of Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, and Joe Dimaggio. What's amazing is how Kahn gets into a few magazine pages an incisive portrait of his subject so that you really feel like you know the person after just a few pages. What a writing talent.
I'll have more to say.
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