Roger Kahn for the Hall of Fame?

July 25, 2014

The author of this Huffington Post piece makes a compelling argument.

roger--768x949.jpgMost latter-day fans of Kahn know him from his nostalgic look at The Boys of Summer, which — hard to believe — was published more than 40 years ago. But he was also a beat writer for those Brooklyn Dodgers, as well as a staple of SPORT and many other magazines.

From the HuffPo article by Robert Miraldi:

[I]t is his books about baseball that should be most remembered. In 1955 he co-authored an almanac about baseball and followed in 1962 with a baseball book for juveniles. In 1982 he wrote a novel about baseball. In 1985 he took a part ownership in a minor league baseball team and then wrote a charming account of the season in the acclaimed Good Enough to Dream. Books about Joe DiMaggio and Pete Rose followed in 1986 and 1989. (The Rose book was a disaster because, just before publication, news about Rose’s gambling surfaced.)

In 1993 Kahn brought readers back to The Era: 1947-1957, When the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers ruled the world and warmly recreated his Memories of Summer: When baseball was an art and writing about it a game.

He explored the nuances of pitching in his 2000 book, The Head Game. And in 2002, he recaptured the memorable and tumultuous season when the New York Yankees battled the Boston Red Sox for a championship in October Men: Reggie Jackson, George Steinbrenner, Billy Martin, and the Yankees’ miraculous finish in 1978. In 2004 an anthology with many of his best baseball articles were collected in Beyond the Boys of Summer (which I edited and which includes a bibliography of his work up to 2003).

Good Enough was indeed a sweet story, given that he writes a lot about his relationship with his daughter, which I, in turn, can relate to. It was included in 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die.

Kahn has a new title coming out this fall via Rodale: Rickey & Robinson: The True, Untold Story of the Integration of Baseball. Do I need to say how much I’m looking forward to it?

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