There are many ways to waste one's youth; I wasted mine rooting for the Yankees and the Republicans. They were my teams, not because they won but because they were near: Yankee Stadium was an hour's drive from my home; the Democrats, a little farther. Brookyn was terra incognita—no one I knew had ventured there—though when my radio wandered off-course I could hear Red Barber speaking a nearly familiar language from a place called Ebbets Field. Not everyone, I knew, worshiped [Tommy] Henrich and [Charles "King Kong"] Keller, though it would take time for me to learn the inevitablity, the necessity, of defeat, the kind of defeat that makes men endure. My Yankees would presently exhibit it; Kahn's book about the Brooklyn Dodgers investigates and celebrates it….

"The Boys of Summer" invites us to remember what we once knew of these men—breaking curves, fast moves...