To Absent Friends - Roger Kahn, Orson Bean

Roger Kahn

1927 -2020

The passing of Roger Kahn at the age of 92 needs to be noted for the simple reason that he wrote what is generally acknowledged as the single greatest sports book of all time:

Kahn was a long time New York sports writer who as a very young man had the good fortune of being assigned to the Brooklyn Dodgers beat by his paper, the New York Herald Tribune in the first half of the decade of the 1950's, and thus was exposed to one of the most storied teams ever, those Dodgers of Robinson, Reese, Campanella, Hodges, Snider, Furillo, Erskine, and so on and so forth.  "The Boys of Summer", published in 1972,  was part the story of Kahn's own youth growing up in New York in the 1930's and 1940's, part the story of actually covering this team, and here is the best part, the story of Kahn revisiting these storied heroes in the late '60s and early '70s to see what they were currently doing as older men.  (Actually, at the time, I recall that publicity for the book talked about Kahn revisiting them as "old men", but since they were actually guys who were then in their forties, I prefer to use the term "older" men.)

Anyway, it was remarkable book that was about a lot more than baseball.  It was about fathers and sons, about prejudice and courage (the story of Jackie Robinson is, as it should be, at the heart of the book), and about how life treats all of us, sometimes not in the kindest of manners.  It has become the book to which all other sports books are compared.  For example, a great book about the 1970's Steelers, "Their Life's Work" by Gary Pomerantz from a few years ago was called in reviews "the 'Boys of Summer' of football."  Every baseball fan should read it, but so should everyone.  It is that great a book.

Kahn continued to write, and most of it is good stuff, but nothing ever compared to his masterwork, "The Boys of Summer."

Actor and raconteur Orson Bean was killed in a pedestrian accident in Los Angeles over the weekend at the age of 91.  He had a long and varied career as an actor. I last remember seeing him appear in an episode of Modern Family a few years ago.  He was an interesting guy who "dropped out" of the mainstream in his late forties or early fifties and lived a peripatetic hippie lifestyle with his family for a few years.  I most remember him for his appearances on New York based game shows and as a guest on talk shows such as the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and the Merv Griffin Show.  He was always smart and amusing, and he always made it a point to tell a single stand alone joke with each appearance.  I remember one in particular, and I will tell it to you here as a tribute to Mr. Bean.

A guy brings his female parrot to a pet shop in order to have her bred with a male parrot that was housed there.  After some back-and-forth negotiations, they agree on a stud fee of $100.  They then put the female into the cage with the male and cover the cage with a towel to allow them some privacy.  Shortly thereafter, an unbelievable amount of squawking and squealing is heard and the cage starts to shake alarmingly.  The shop owner pulls the towel off of the cage only to see that the male parrot has the female pinned to the floor of the cage with one claw while he's pulling her feathers out with the other claw and yelling "For a hundred bucks I want you naked!!"

Now THAT'S a joke.

RIP Roger Kahn and Orson Bean.

Book Review - "Rickey & Robinson"

I received this book as a Christmas gift (and Thank You again, George and Ann!), and finally got around to reading it in the post-holiday, post-vacation slowdown.

One might be tempted to say, "Another book about Jackie Robinson? What new can possibly be written on this topic?"  The one thing that would prompt me to overlook those questions would be the author, Roger Kahn, whose connections and closeness to the Brooklyn Dodgers of that era are well known, as best exemplified by his classic work, "The Boys of Summer".  Also, and I don't think that this can be overstated, the story of Jackie Robinson, Branch Rickey, and the integration of major league baseball is a story that cannot be told often enough, so any contribution to the literature on the subject, especially by so noted an author is welcome.

The book does tell you some things of which one might not be aware, specifically the byzantine workings of the ownership of the Brooklyn Dodgers, how Walter O'Malley came to be a part of it, and his maneuverings that eventually squeezed Branch Rickey out in Brooklyn.

Kahn makes no secret about his admiration for Robinson, as both a ballplayer and a human being, and for Rickey in his role as the instigator of this huge societal change. He also expresses a great deal of admiration for Walter O'Malley, although in the end, Kahn does revert to "Great Satan"-type imagery for O'Malley because he moved the Dodgers out of Brooklyn and out to Los Angeles.  Kahn also uses much of the book as a vehicle for grinding axes against many of his contemporary sports writers, Dick Young in particular.  While his assertions may be and probably are correct, is that really what this book was supposed to be about?  Kahn also lets you know that any other book or writing on this topic pretty much falls short of anything that he, Kahn, has written on the subject.  And for all his admiration for Robinson, at the end of the book he relates a rather prurient story about him, that to my mind had no need to be told.

On balance, though, "Rickey & Robinson" is an interesting and readable book about a part of baseball history that, as I mentioned, cannot be told often enough.