Book Review-Wait Until Next Year

August and September should be a time of energy and excitement. The weather is warm, the sound of kids playing on a slip and slide, and being riveted to the baseball games and standings. This year has not lived up to those standards. We did have a couple of weeks of hot weather in August, but it was rainy and 58 today as I made my way to work. The kids are all inside playing the last video games of the summer before they head back to school next week. And baseball is anything but riveting here in the Northwest. Read my News and Views for my rant on the Mariners.
Doris Kearns Goodwin is an historian that I got to know originally from her appearances on PBS documentaries by Ken Burns. A couple of years ago I read her book, Team of Rivals about Lincoln and his cabinet. Before that book, she wrote Wait Till Next Year about her growing up in New York in the 1950's. Her dad would head off to work each day in the city and she would wait until he came home at night to discuss the Brooklyn Dodger game. The book looks at life in suburbia in a more innocent time. Community was extremely important in her development. Her growth as a story teller and later an historian stems from the closeness shared by the local shop keepers, friends and family. Memories of baseball are not so much about the final score or the accomplishments of a player, but the feel of the crowd, the images of the ballpark and the excitement generated by hope of a better outcome tomorrow. This is my memory of the 50's and baseball still gives me the feeling of hope. Not much of a story. Not really captivating. The book is about America and what we can do even under adversity.
Enjoy!
Dennis