Tuesday, April 13, 2004
My Favorite Baseball Books!
One of my favorite baseball books is Wait 'Til Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Goodwin is a prominent historian and author of a very good book about FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt called No Ordinary Time. People who watched Ken Burns Baseball series on PBS back in 1994 probably remember Goodwin from the later "innings" talking about the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s and the Red Sox in the 1960s.
Goodwin's book is a memoir about her days growing up in a Long Island suburb rooting for the Dodgers. It is a good book, full of nostalgia for a bygone era: the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn was a shock to baseball fans everywhere and in New York in particular. Fans today reading it can empathize with the pain Goodwin felt when Bobby Thomson hit that home run in the '51 Dodgers-Giants playoff game. (I'm thinking back to Joe Carter's home run in the sixth game of the '93 World Series. Ugh!) Goodwin's prose is very readable. (I was a history major in college, and I've found that serious historians often write in droning, lecturing tones that alienate readers. David McCullough's work, especially his book Truman , is a notable exception.) (A little off subject, but if anyone didn't catch the History Channel's recent series about the Barbarians I recommend it highly.) This is not a serious historical deconstruction of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950's. This is a person's memories about growing up with baseball.
One of my favorite baseball books.
Goodwin's book is a memoir about her days growing up in a Long Island suburb rooting for the Dodgers. It is a good book, full of nostalgia for a bygone era: the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn was a shock to baseball fans everywhere and in New York in particular. Fans today reading it can empathize with the pain Goodwin felt when Bobby Thomson hit that home run in the '51 Dodgers-Giants playoff game. (I'm thinking back to Joe Carter's home run in the sixth game of the '93 World Series. Ugh!) Goodwin's prose is very readable. (I was a history major in college, and I've found that serious historians often write in droning, lecturing tones that alienate readers. David McCullough's work, especially his book Truman , is a notable exception.) (A little off subject, but if anyone didn't catch the History Channel's recent series about the Barbarians I recommend it highly.) This is not a serious historical deconstruction of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950's. This is a person's memories about growing up with baseball.
One of my favorite baseball books.
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