Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #174111 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Customer Reviews

Why baseball is more than just a game...
Some sports lend themselves to quality writing. In the UK the finest prose is almost always devoted to cricket. Perhaps it's the slow pace,allowing contemplation, punctuated by bursts of intense action, or its historical link to some pastoral England which may or may not have existed. . Baseball is similarly blessed in the USA,and Kahn's book with its thoughtful ,insightful and moving style, its unashamed and autobiographical content, and its warts and all description of the struggles of black athletes for acceptance in 1950s America, is outstanding. Its greatest triumph, though, is the obvious love and respect that the author has not only for the game but also those flawed and complex characters who played it. The book glows with this warmth, as it follows the mixed fortunes of the 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers some 20 years later.

A deeply moving story of the Jackie Robinson Dodgers
There's no sugarcoating of the Jackie Robinson Dodgers in this story. We see them in full, pioneers, bigots, fathers and husbands.

The way that they have survived the changes in their lives says far more about their character than any penny-ante poem or polemic. Kahn lived and worked with these men for two years, and his achievement is that he makes us feel that we knew them as well as he did.

A sad story, brilliantly written.
This is a very sad story of how fate conspired to rob a team of the success they deserved and then dealt so cruelly with many of the players in their later lives. The story of the seasons Kahn spent with the team is absorbing. The stories of his meetings with them many years later are moving. The book is brilliantly written. It is about sport but more about the struggles of mankind. An undoubted 5 stars.