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RIP Roger Kahn, 1927-2020

G-Fafif Feb 07 2020 09:56 AM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Feb 07 2020 10:38 AM

Author of one of the essential baseball books, The Boys of Summer, and many others, 92. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/obituaries/roger-kahn-who-lifted-sportswriting-with-boys-of-summer-dies-at-92.html

kcmets Feb 07 2020 10:15 AM Re: RIP Roger Kahn, 1927-2020 Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Feb 07 2020 10:57 AM

I re-read Memories of Summer over the holidays. If you liked Boys, I give it a three-thumbs-up recommendation. RIP.

G-Fafif Feb 07 2020 10:37 AM Re: RIP Roger Kahn, 1927-2020

Memories of Summer describes the World Series as I always wish to think of it. Six hundred of the best and most popular sportswriters in the country would cover every inning of every game. The ranks included […] Vincent X. Flaherty of San Francisco. The closest major league stadium, Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, stood 2,140 miles east of Flaherty's home base, but the old World Series transcended geography. It was a front page story across the country, especially exotic to people who lived thousands of miles away. Few Americans had seen anything more of a World Series than patchy black-and-white scenes worked into newsreels. Those glimpses left imagination free to roam.

batmagadanleadoff Feb 07 2020 10:51 AM Re: RIP Roger Kahn, 1927-2020

I loved Boys of Summer. Maybe I'll make Memories my next read.

Johnny Lunchbucket Feb 07 2020 10:55 AM Re: RIP Roger Kahn, 1927-2020

Guys named Roger were really good baseball writers, even Steve J

G-Fafif Feb 08 2020 01:07 PM Re: RIP Roger Kahn, 1927-2020

From the Pest, in the runup to the 2000 World Series: As far as the Mets, Kahn is not very fond of the current National League team in New York. “I always felt, probably emotionally, that the Mets were a copied Dodgers,” said Kahn, whose latest baseball tome, entitled “The Head Game” (Harcourt, $25), is an analytic look at baseball from the pitcher's point of view. Fred Wilpon probably read that and took it as a compliment. https://nypost.com/2000/10/12/kahn-series-no-biggie/

Benjamin Grimm Feb 10 2020 02:32 PM Re: RIP Roger Kahn, 1927-2020

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71xM1-E2sVL.jpg> Back in 2000, I was in LAX waiting to board a flight back to the East Coast and I didn't have enough reading material. I chose this book at an airport bookstore and it was a terrific read. Roger Kahn's talents went beyond baseball. It was such a good book that I may very well read it again some day. I've been doing a lot of book purging lately in an attempt to declutter my house and my life but this is one I'm going to hang on to.

Edgy MD Feb 11 2020 07:58 AM Re: RIP Roger Kahn, 1927-2020

My favorite part of The Boys of Summer was when he visited with Duke Snider and wife out in California. They went out to a dinner club where Eartha Kitt's act was as much burlesque as cabaret. At the end of the show, Mrs. Snider — a devout Methodist, who didn't think her good fortune should be squandered on such vulgarities — turned to the other two and said, "Not the sort of show one recommends to one's friends." Kahn, still a Brooklyn boy at heart, shrugged and responded, "Depends on who one's friends are."