Roger Kahn, R.I.P.

[RedsBaron]

I somehow had missed the news that Roger Kahn died last month, age 92. I couldn't find any mention of his passing here, so I decided to start a thread. Ordinarily I would post a thread about the passing of an author and journalist in the arts and entertainment forum rather than here, but while Kahn was not much of an athlete, a forum devoted to baseball seems to me the place in which to note his death. In my youth I used to read his articles in Sport magazine back in the 1960s, including a wonderful article he did on the aging Willie Mays. His opus was of course his book The Boys of Summer, his memoir of his tenure at the New York Herald Tribune during the 1952 and 1953 baseball seasons covering the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was a moving and sentimental book about baseball, yes, but more so about life, aging and mortality. R.I.P.

[RichRed]

I didn’t realize Kahn had passed away either. I actually preferred his later book, Good Enough to Dream, to Boys of Summer.
Here’s a summary from Amazon:

“Roger Kahn's first major league hit was a grand slam: The Boys of Summer, his runaway bestseller that immortalized the 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers. Now Kahn does the same for players whose moment in the sun has not yet arrived. Good Enough to Dream is the story of his year as owner of the Class A, very minor league Utica Blue Sox. Most of the Blue Sox will never make it to the majors, but they all share the dream that links the small child in the sandlot with the bonus baby who has just smacked one out of the stadium. It's a dream Kahn learned from his father and, in the course of a season, passes on to his daughter-hours of practice for a moment of poetry; a hard living but a touch of legend. Good Enough to Dream presents baseball unadorned, a game still sweet enough to lure grown men to leagues where first-class transportation is an old school bus and the infield is likely to be the consistency of thick soup. It is a funny and poignant story of one season and one special team that will make us hesitate before we ever call anything "bush league" again.“

[cumberlandreds]

I didn't know he had died either. I read The Boys of Summer many years ago. I checked it out at the local library. It's still one of the best books of any kind I have ever read. RIP Roger Kahn

[Roy Tucker]

Ostensibly, there are two kinds of sports writing “gee whiz” and “aw nuts”. Kahn was the rare beast that did both.

[Chip R]

I didn’t realize Kahn had passed away either. I actually preferred his later book, Good Enough to Dream, to Boys of Summer.

So did I.

[westofyou]

Joe P wrote a great piece on his passing on the Athletic

https://theathletic.com/1592608/2020...y=roger%20kahn

Obit on NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/o...ies-at-92.html

Boys of the Summer was one of the first baseball books I read over and over,that and Five Seasons by Roger Angell. Both got me hooked on baseball books outside of Bios

Kahn also wrote a great book called “The Head Game: Baseball Seen From the Pitcher’s Mound” which I highly recommend