The Era, 1947-1957: When the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers Ruled the World

by Roger Kahn

Celebrated sports writer Roger Kahn casts his gaze on the golden age of baseball, an unforgettable time when the game thrived as America's unrivaled national sport. The Era begins in 1947 with Jackie Robinson changing major league baseball forever by taking the field for the Dodgers. Dazzling, momentous events characterize the decade that followed-Robinson's amazing accomplishments; the explosion on the national scene of such soon-to-be legends as Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Bobby Thomson, Duke Snider, and Yogi Berra; Casey Stengel's crafty managing; the emergence of televised games; and the stunning success of the Yankees as they play in nine out of eleven World Series. The Era concludes with the relocation of the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, a move that shook the sport to its very roots.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, History, Nonfiction, Ebooks

392 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Roger Kahn was best known for The Boys of Summer, about the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Reviews

[Brina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before the world turned upside down, we in the baseball book club had decided to honor sportswriter Roger Kahn who passed away this winter by reading two of his books over the first three months of the season. Now that there is no baseball season, I have found that I need the work of Roger Kahn more than ever. In the month of April, I chose to only read baseball books. I needed to read about baseball as a coping mechanism for the fact that the game is not part of my day to day life from April through October. Since then, I have branched out a bit, but Kahn’s reporting on the Era from 1947-1957, when Willie, Mickey, and the Duke roamed centerfield in New York and at least one New York club was represented in the World Series each fall, stands out. The era ushered in a golden age of baseball, and during a Passover holiday when I was offline during a two day power outage, I was able to read this book along with my teenager son and savor baseball during its heyday.

Roger Kahn was a young reporter for the New York Daily Tribune when he was assigned to cover the Brooklyn Dodgers during the 1952 and 1953 seasons. Younger than most of the players on the team, Kahn was taken under the wing of Dodgers manager Charlie Dressen, who referred to Kahn as “kid.” Dodgers management lead by Walter O’Malley would invite sports writers to play cards and drink with him, and only give good sound bites to the writers who wrote good things about him. Dick Young of the New York Daily News was in O’Malley’s inner circle, but, judging from Kahn’s writing, it appeared as though Young wrote the precursor to today’s exposure style stories that casual fans reads due to click bait. Kahn was still learning how to write when he began to cover the Dodgers, but he was for the most the antithesis of Young and wrote what actually happened. He grew up in Brooklyn a Dodgers fan thanks to his father and was awed at first to be allowed in the locker room of his heroes Reese, Robinson, Furillo, Erskine, Cox, Hodges, and later including Snider, Campanella, and Black. As a fan, Kahn had to learn unbiased reporting. He also was burnt out after the Dodgers lost the World Series to the Yankees yet again in 1953. Following that season, he left the beat, only to resurface as a Giants and Yankees beat writer. Yet, Kahn savored his time with the Dodgers the most, and, eighteen years later met up with each member of the 1953 team, which lead to his seminal book Boys of Summer.

Covering the Giants and Yankees each had its own set of challenges. Giants owner Horace Stoneham was a notorious drinker and manager Leo Durocher was a carouser. It seems as though drinking was prevalent in baseball during the era, so this does not seem that much out of the ordinary. Growing up a generation too late, however, I savored Kahn’s tales of Stoneham’s parties in his bunker across from center field in the Polo Grounds. I learned of the sign stealing used by the Giants through a buzzer in the center field scoreboard that aided Bobby Thomson in his homer off of the Dodgers’ Branca in 1951 that gave the Giants the pennant. As a fan of Robinson I also tend to be biased toward the Dodgers, so I appreciated getting some of a Giants slant in this book as well. Their rivalry was real and it was fierce. The two teams despised each other and each game was like a heavy weight fight, as brawls often broke out between the players. Fighting was aided by Giants pitcher Sal Maglie, a notorious head hunter, and Durocher who had previously been the manager of the Dodgers only to be kicked out of baseball for a year due to his off field pursuits, but perhaps Durocher would not have been the best manager to guide Robinson when he broke the color barrier. We will never know, but Durocher was also there when a young Willie Mays lead the Giants to the 1954 World Series, aided by his famous catch that is still shown on high light reels. Kahn says rumor has it that the Yankees and Dodgers also coveted Mays, and he ended up on the Giants to block the two rival teams from getting him. Kahn’s description of the colorful characters had me mesmerized and all too happy to share my dad’s stories of the era with my son, who was also reading with me. During the sections on the Giants it was all too apparent that I have read much more on the Dodgers than the Giants, and I will have to rectify that deficiency later this year.

Perhaps a reason why I know so little about the Giants in comparison to the Dodgers is because the era really belonged to the Yankees. While the Dodgers and Giants battled for national league supremacy, during the era the Yankees played in or won the World Series in all but one year. Playing in majestic Yankee Stadium, the Yankees were a team of stars lead by Mickey Mantle, who took up the torch passed to him by Joe DiMaggio. Kahn covered the Yankees after leaving the Dodger beat and it was apparent just how good they were. Besides Mantle, the Yankees had Berra and Rizzuto and pitchers Ford and Reynolds as well as a lineup full of secondary stars. If the Yankees had a deficiency, they would would trade with an American League bottom feeder in order to field a team full of stars. My dad likes to joke that the Kansas City A’s and later the Royals were essentially a Yankees farm team. Perhaps he was right. Yet, by winning the World Series from 1949-1953, the Yankees cemented their place as the supreme franchise in all of sports, with the era’s teams rivaling only those of Babe Ruth himself to be crowned best Yankee team ever. Every year but one, 1955, the Dodgers would go up against the Yankees in the fall classic, only to see the Yankees win. While the era belonged to all three New York teams, essentially it belonged to the Yankees in their glory.

Kahn notes that all good things come to an end. The Dodgers and Yankees were getting old, their core players aging out of the every day starting lineup. The Dodgers and Giants moved to California following the 1957 season, ushering in a new era of sports that transversed the entire United States, leaving the Yankees as the only team in New York for five years. The era of Willie, Mickey, and the Duke had ended. The days of Robinson roaming Ebbets Field and Mays in the Polo Grounds were no more. Mantle would have a shorter career than expected due to his bad knees, and the Yankees would have to find new stars. Kahn takes his readers back to this glorious era of baseball, not only when the game itself was the national pastime, but when sportswriters palled with players and managers and rode on the team trains and later planes, resulting in intimate stories about what went on in the dugout and clubhouse and during road trips. The era of 1947-1957 with New York baseball at its heyday will never be replicated. Starved for a the day to day ebbs and flows of the baseball season, I relished the time I spent in an era that ended over sixty years ago.

5 star read

[Mike Gutierrez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I thought the author was a bit Dodger biased, the book does capture beautifully the era of baseball in New York City from 1947-1957 when the Yankees, Dodgers and Giants ruled baseball, when at least one baseball team from New York City was in the World Series. People like Branch Rickey, Jackie Robinson, Casey Stengal, Leo Durocher, Joe DiMaggio among others are wonderfully represented in this very interesting book by Roger Khan.

[Tom Gase · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Era is a good book on what is called the golden age of baseball, 1947-1957, when the Dodgers, Giants and Yankees all played in New York and were three of the best teams in baseball. Author Roger Kahn does a good job telling stories on the teams, and some of its great players like Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays and Pee Wee Reese, as well as coaches Leo Durocher and Casey Stengel.

I would have given it a higher ranking than three if not for the following...1)I've read a lot of books better than this on teams in this time period. David Halberstam's Summer of 49 and Roger Kahn's own Boys of Summer are better. 2)I get the impression that Kahn believes he is the ONLY writer that can write about this era accurately and it feels like he he tooting his own horn too much. Too many off-to-the-side remarks about how he likes or doesn't like certain writers. He could have left that stuff out. It does nothing to the story. 3)The first half of the book is awesome, written in great detail not only about the season but the playoff and World Series gamees as well. Then the second half feels rushed. It's like Kahn realized the book was going to be 1,000 pages if he didn't hurry up, so then he goes through the 1952-1956 seasons in about 50 pages. The Dodgers finally win the World Series in 1955 and there is about two pages on it. Really Mr. Kahn? That's all? So the second half of the book feels rushed. I was on page 330 out of 338, and I realized, wow, this book is about 11 years in baseball and he still has yet to talk about the 54 Giants and Mays' great catch, the 55 Dodgers and their World Series title, the Don Larsen perfect game for the Yankees in 56, the 57 season where the Yankees lost to the Braves, and the Dodgers and Giants moving to L.A. If Roger Kahn thinks he is the only writer that can talk about this subject, and he is a great writer, than he has to do all of this in more than eight pages. That being said, if you don't read too many baseball books and don't have the baseball library I do, then this is a great book, worthy of closer to four stars. I'd recommend it to any Giants, Dodgers or Yankees fan or anyone that grew up in the 50's.

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

An audiobook listen while road tripping. It was fine, but nothing spectacular. Most of the book was spent on 1947-1951 so I have no idea why it says that it spans 10 years. I lost focus during the passages that described in great detail the specific games and plays in World Series games. That was just unnecessary. I also didn’t love how each time we started a new year, we had to get the whole history and backstory on some person that we may never hear about again or, if we do hear about them again, it is so much further on in the book that you’ve forgotten who they were. And the backstory was almost always about a manager, team president or owner, rarely about a player. There is a lot of interesting information in this book but it gets lost in the baseball play by play minutiae.

[Josh Hitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

This era was a great one for NY baseball. They dominated most years and were both pennant winners for a lot of it. The book is a fine overview of the New York teams during those years. Kahn writes like a gossip columinist, and that was annoying, but overall, it does the job. He tries to act that he was the first to get all of his facts straight. Though I've read a lot of books that came before 93 that had the same tales told basically the same way.

If you just want a quick overview of the subject, then this is fine. Though you're better off reading books that deal with single years and teams to get a real feel of what was going on and without the gossiping routine.

[Joelb · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Roger Kahn’s The Boys of Summer a number of years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. That book focused on the players for the 1953 Dodgers. The Era expands the subject to the three New York teams from 1947 through 1957. With a couple of exceptions, every World Series during that span was a contest between the Yankees and either the Giants or Dodgers. Just as critical to the definition of The Era are the facts that it begins with Jackie Robinson’s integration of major league ball and ends with the desertion of NYC by both of its National League clubs.

Kahn makes a point of getting all the stories straight, historically speaking, often correcting he record when misinformation has been circulated so many times that it’s taken for truth. For this, we owe Kahn a debt of thanks. From the vantage point of 2019, it seems easy to get the particulars on baseball games and historical incidents from the early 1950s, but Kahn wrote this book in the early 1990s, when such aid was not available. He interviewed as many of the old ball players and team execs as he could, and is at pains to cite primary sources for his observations.

Unfortunately, the attention to detail and rigorous veracity make the book slow going at times. I’m a passionate baseball fan and am willing to read a 2-page blow-by-blow account of a critical game from 1953, but I’ll admit to skimming in a few of those instances. On the other hand, Kahn’s writing (for the most part) is vivid and often compelling, so reading the book is anything but a chore.

Since the book covers a ten-year span, it inevitably must be selective. The stars of the time are fully drawn, but lesser players are sometimes hard to tell apart because they’re mentioned but not delineated.
The book is well-organized, though, to deal with the mass of information Kahn must have sifted through for the project.

Roger Kahn was a young sportswriter in New York during The Era, and encountered first-hand many of the people he writes about. He makes an excellent case for the uniqueness of The Era in baseball history. It’s a certainty that no such era will ever be repeated.

[MJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took the time to savor this one - it was incredibly fun to read. Kahn's first-hand knowledge of the players (both off-field and on) puts you in the story, and therefore makes it more difficult to accept the end (O'Malley moving the Dodgers, for almost no discernible reason beyond greed and ego, to Los Angeles). A little light on Mays and Mantle, but Kahn warns you upfront, and you find yourself genuinely riveted by Leo Durocher and Casey Stengel. The Robinson saga is well-known and perhaps retread here to lesser effect, but the context, and again the author's personal knowledge, add a lot to the familiar stuff.

Personal favorite part - Pee Wee Reese's story.

This does make a person loathe the vaunted Joe DiMaggio, though, and as a Yankee fan by blood, that hurts a bit. No more so, however, than any time the shine is taken off historic fairy tales.

Fun experiment - read this while your spouse reads 'The Kid' (about Ted Williams), and compare/contrast Boston and New York during the Era.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a solid, if slightly strange, book. It's about the 11 seasons when New York-based baseball teams played in the World Series every year, often with both participants being from the greater NYC area: 1947-1957. It was the era of Yankees dominance, as they won 7 of those series, while their National League counterparts the Brooklyn Dodgers and NY Giants won one each (and lost to the Yankees several times). The period was also a heyday for New York itself, as the problems of urbanization had yet to occur in massive form, and everyone in America was enjoying (to some degree) a post-World War II economic boom.

Roger Kahn is one of the most beautiful baseball writers we've ever had, and he brings both his lyrical style and his attention to detail as a reporter to the task of covering those years. Although he researched and wrote this book in the late 1980s, he was a witness to many of the events he wrote about because he was a young baseball daily reporter for one of NY's hotly competing newspapers at the time. Plus, because he made a career of covering baseball, he interviewed and befriended many of the greats of that era and thus was able to speak with them at length about the defining moments of their careers and their lives.

One of the best things about this book is that Kahn both tells you what happened as it was happening, but then intersperses his more recent sit-downs with the principals to go over those events. He gets more information about the details than was publicized at the time. This can be a baseball matter, such as where first baseman Gil Hodges was standing during a particular at-bat, and whether he shouldn't have been holding a runner on first and instead trying to stop a single to his right, which is what happened. Or it could be how a manager like Leo Durocher was supportive of some players who he thought always had the ultimate in competitive fire (Jackie Robinson) but really harsh on others who he felt needed a push (Don Newcombe). And the players or their teammates talked with Kahn decades later about whether Durocher was right or wrong, and the consequences as it played out on the field.

The author also does a good job of exploding some myths. The biggest one he takes on at the start of the book because 1947 was the year Jackie Robinson broke the "color line" by being the first black major leaguer since the 1880s. What Kahn tells is that the skepticism about Robinson and black players in general was more widespread than people were later willing to admit, after it became obvious that black players were great and our society widely adopted racial equality as a positive. While it's well-known that some teams and players tried to boycott Robinson and the Dodgers in his first few months in the league (including teammate Dixie Walker and most of the St. Louis Cardinals), what's less known is that the NY newspapers in Robinson's first months tried to downplay the significance of him being on the team. They didn't preview his arrival in their preseason stories, didn't put him on the front page of the newspaper or even as the lead in their articles. It's as though they thought it was a cute experiment that wouldn't last. And Kahn nails them for it -- with the benefit of decades of hindsight, of course.

The reason I say it's a slightly strange book is that Kahn is a victim of his era in some ways. For example, he chuckles at the excessive drinking and whoring of the players and managers such as Leo Durocher. Willie Mays is always saying, "Sir." Kahn soft-pedals the horrors that were Joe DiMaggio in real life, writing just that his friend "procured" showgirls for him and that DiMaggio could be dour and a bit of a prima donna. In fact, all women in the book are leggy blondes, whether a wife, girlfriend or one-night pickup. That stuff just doesn't hold up well. I realize that Kahn is writing in the tradition of glorifying the players and laughing at the man-child environment, and I realize that it's not great to only read negative stuff like the DiMaggio biography of a few years ago. But it's still a little cringy.

But overall, this is a really good book. You get some coverage of each season, with the defining moments in the World Series reviewed, sometimes play-by-play and from numerous angles. None of the era's great players gets too much coverage, as this book is more like quick-hitter descriptions of Mantle, Mays, Berra, DiMaggio, Campanella, Robinson, Ford, Maglie, Furillo, Snider, and so on. It feels right.

Also, you learn about the off-field issues that defined the era. Jackie Robinson. Dominance of print media and how the press was flattered and, basically, paid off for positive coverage. And the financial pressures on the Giants and Dodgers -- and the avariceness of their owners -- that led to their moves to California after the 1957 season. You learn both sides of those debates, like the truth that attendance in Brooklyn was way down during the era, despite the greatness of the teams. But much of that could be blamed on outdated, stinky stadiums, and much of that attendance loss was offset by new TV revenue. Neither the Giants nor Dodgers were in financial trouble when they moved, but their owners could see bigger paydays out West.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book that made me ... well, f"all in love" is not the right term ... "become infatuated with", maybe ... the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s was *not* The Boys of Summer, Roger Kahn's most well-known work, but instead Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers by Peter Golenbock. Of course, I went on to read Kahn's magnum opus. So I was very excited to find this work, which focuses not only on the Dodgers, but the Yankees and Giants of the same era. You probably gathered that from the title.

As Kahn himself states, this book focuses far more on the first few years (1947-49) of "the era" moreso than the last eight, that being not only b/c the Dodgers met the Yankees in the World Series in 2 of those 3 years, but, of course, Jackie Robinson debuted in the National League in 1947.

Kahn is a classic 2oth-century liberal, and he interweaves some contemporary political context into most of the chapters as he tells the tales of the Bronx, the Polo Grounds, and Ebbets Field. Describing how NL president Ford Frick squashed a potential player strike by the St. Lous Cardinals over Robinson's participation, he writes "And there amid shafts of spring sunlight, the strike withered. Was there ever a more glorious moment in sport?"

In addition to the societal commentary, this book is as much about sportswriting as it is about baseball. Kahn himself worked for the New York Herald Tribune and was one of a coterie of daily beat writers in the boroughs -- Red Smith, Arthur Daley, Jimmy Cannon, Dick Young, John Lardner, and more -- as different from today as the Polo Grounds is to Citi Field. Some he clearly adores, some he disdains. But it's wonderful to read sports writing that sounds like writing, not your standard AP recap of a 7-5 game in Arlington. "Center field at Yankee Stadium was only slightly smaller than the state of Nebraska" (Kahn); "Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again" (Smith, on deadline, after the shot heard round the world); "Out of the mockery and ridicule of 'the worst Word Series in history', the greatest ball game ever played was born yesterday" (Young after Game 4 of the '47 WS); "The unhappiest man is sitting up here now in the far end of the press box. The 'V' in his typewriter is broken. He can't write 'Lavagetto' or 'Bevens'...." (Smith again, also after Game 4, in which Cookie Lavagetto broke up a no-hitter by Bill Bevens with 2-out in the 9th, winning the game 3-2 for Brooklyn).

As such, the story is fundamentally about what it was like to live and breathe baseball in mid-century New York -- when the sport was at its popular apex, its heroes at their grandest -- as it is about the games themselves. The writers it attracted to cover it were as talented, relatively speaking, as its famous center fielders: Joe D, Mickey, Willie, Duke.

Of course, there are the games. Decades later, Kahn's description of a game can still maintain rapt attention -- there is a full chapter on 1947's Game 4 and a long section on Bobby Thomson's moment in 1951, among many, many others. There are tales of drunkenness among the players, managers, and team personnel (the stories about Larry MacPhail, who ran both the Dodgers and the Yankees in the '40s, are worth the trip to the library to check the book out on their own). There are people and characters and situations that simply do not exist any longer; some, certainly for the better, but I think many for the worst.

Mainly, I was left with the realization that it really was a different time and place. You couldn't follow a game pitch-by-pitch on your phone, or stream home and away contests for every MLB team from your family room couch, or get instantaneous statistical feedback online. But many of the greatest athletes from the country *played baseball*, and the newspapers covered it, and most importantly, your neighbors talked and argued and fought about it. The past, they say, is a different country. I wouldn't mind taking a trip there to watch a few ballgames.

(this book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize)

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pleasant if somewhat superficial history of the period in question--a period in which the 3 major league baseball teams in New York dominated the game. The period Kahn selects is defined as beginning when the Dodgers brought up Jackie Robinson, the first black player in the Major Leagues (thereby making the Dodgers pennant winners) and ending when the Dodgers and Giants both left New York for California. In that period, there was only one year when at least one of these teams was in the World Series. (If one focuses on these teams rather than their location, then during the 20-year period 194-1966, there were only 2 years in which at least one of these teams wasn't in the World Series.)

Kahn's narration isn't particularly systematic. He does cover each year, but largely through anectodes and often skethcy coverage of the on-field activities. He's best at digging out semi-obscure anectodes, many of which he knew from his days as a reporter covering one or the other of these teams. Even though I'm pretty familiar with this era and these teams, many of the stories Kahn tells hear were new to me.

Two things about this book bothered me. First, Kahn's style is often quite breezy, annoyingly so. Second, he pads the book out with recitations of facts from the "outside" world to give some larger context to the baseball events of the particular year or moment. I've seen this tactic used in other books about baseball in different time periods and, frankly, it adds nothing to the story. There's little if any connection between the political or other world events and the baseball story being told, so these passages are just padding.

[Len Knighton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Those who have read my reviews on Goodreads since 2016 have read that I have a rather unusual, and unrevealed, method of picking the books that are put on the Currently Reading list. While these books are selected at random, it has not been unusual for me to be reading two or more books that are connected by subject or characters at the same time or within the same month. Indeed, within the past two weeks I have read two books that have focused on aspects of the invasion of Normandy, June 6, 1944, that have been largely neglected or ignored in other books and dramatizations. Reading these books at or near the same time enhanced the reading and learning experience.
During the past week or so I have been reading, and have finished, two books by Roger Kahn: this one and MEMORIES OF SUMMER. They have been a joy to read and have kindled some of my own Summer memories. However, there has been one drawback: some of the stories shared by Kahn are in both books, almost verbatim.
I was born in 1950 and so have no memories of The Era. My two best friends, who, like me, are huge baseball fans, and I have often wished we could have witnessed baseball in New York City, including Brooklyn, during these years. While we don't have a TARDIS to take us back to that Era, we are blessed with authors like Kahn and Doris Kearns Goodwin who have. What a magical time that must have been.
If you are a baseball fan I heartily recommend and book by Roger Kahn and Goodwin's Wait Til Next Year. Rating the book on its merits alone, I give it

Five Stars

[Bob Congdon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pure unadulterated Pleasure!

I was 12 years old in 1957 when the Dodgers left town. My idols and National League Baseball left New York. Roger Kahn captured the entire capsule of my pre teens fanaticism with the Dodgers, the hated Yankees and Giants. It was reliving my youth all over again and I still cry for my idols departure. He nails the racism of MLB, JAckie Robinson and Willie Mays. He takes Casey Stengel to New heights only topped by his low point of managing my beloved Mets. I was sorry the book ended, but then again so did the era. I am happy I discovered baseball during the era.

[John McGuinness · Rating 5 out of 5]

The real story

During this era I was 7 thru 17 years of age and I was a ferocious fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers, many of whom were neighbors. During that time there was a sanctity of the clubhouse, similar to Las Vegas. Consequently that mindset and our youth provided a rather puristic view of baseball so it was enlightening to read some of the happenings from behind the scenes as it was to relive those great joys and heartache of our youth. As he did in Boys of Summer, Kahn portrayed this expertly.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kahn revives bygone era

Roger Kahn revives a bygone era, one never to return. A city that was home to three major league baseball clubs, hosting the World Series for 10 straight seasons, is not only inconceivable today, but because of the game's infrastructure could never happen today, And Roger Kahn had a front row seat for it all and shares his memories and research, making the reader the real winner of The Era.

[bruce smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kahn but not Kahn

Given what might have been the brightest pallet to expose upon, instead Roger Kahn ( of the absolutely BRILLIANT Boys of Summer) spends a hundred pages on the drinking habits of baseball executives. These years were full of PLAYERS and it was there that Kahn fell short. Still a good read if you were a fan of any of these 3 teams in the 50s. But when your benchmark is as high as Boys of Summer, maybe some slack is allowed.

[Leonard]

Another great book for older baseball fans. I remember many of these great names and even saw some of them play. I was intrigued by the stories about the owners and the dealings with players and managers they had. It seems that many of the owners needed to be investigated by Major League Baseball for the dealings they had with players, (Mickey Mantle having to work in a mine in the off season to support his family)? A thoroughly enjoyable book for baseball fans.

[Richard H Ragno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brought back many exciting baseball memories as I was growing in New York City. Easy reading and found some interesting facts that I was not aware of.

Brought back many exciting baseball memories as I was growing up in New York City. Found some more interesting facts I was not aware of. Easy reading

[Jeff Dickison · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good baseball book, but not as good as "The Boys of Summer" by this same author. From 1947-1957 there was only one world series that did not feature one of the New York teams (Yankees, Dodgers, Giants). Kahn dissects each season with know how and lots of humorous gossip. Recommended to baseball fans.

[Cindy Regan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book kind of, sort of made me l-l-l-like the Yankees. At least the long ago late-40s to late-50s Yankees. And of course since Boys of Summer, I have adored that era's Dodgers. I'll even throw a little love to Durocher's Giants. What a fun era it must have been to be a baseball fan in NYC.

[Randolph Rossi · Rating 5 out of 5]

New York Not Only Ruled Baseball but it also Ruled The World

A great baseball book that told not only what was happening in Baseball but also in the US and the World. The book was very entertaining and very insightful for this era of baseball and the country.

[Raymond Medrano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good Times

I am old enough to remember the era. I enjoyed the book and the memories that it brought back. I lived within walking distance old Briggs Stadium and still remember baseball from that era. A great book.

[J Chad · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you’ve read and enjoyed “The Boys of Summer” you’ll find this to be a boring, dreary, mind-numbing drag in which the author conflates his opinion of economics with history, glosses over rather substantial biographical details, and generally makes truly exciting ballgames a drudge.

[bob bursey · Rating 5 out of 5]

it was a great era.

Great book and a great writer. Knew it would be because it was Roger Kahn. I’m not a yankee or dodger or giant fan and still loved the book. Highly recommend it to any baseball fan who remembers that era. Or someone who would like to know about it.

[Mike Glaser · Rating 4 out of 5]

My second favorite era of baseball focusing on the three New York teams between 1947-1957. More dirt than I had even before on a number of individuals but well researched with a different angle than some of the other books on this era. Highly recommended for baseball fans.

[Alan Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Baseball was still THE national pastime. The latter couple of years covered were when, as a kid, baseball drew my attention.

[Chris Pohlman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good read

Having been a fan of baseball my whole life, I was intrigued by the title. I have read a few other Tiger Kahn books and have been pleased with all of them.

[Marty Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Personal recollections of baseball's "Golden Era" centered on NY teams. A bit rambling but still interesting.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read, with interesting sections on integration. A bit too nostalgic for the old days

[William C · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read this book several times over the years. If you love baseball and personalities, you’ll love this book.

[Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

New York City had the pleasure of three baseball teams until 1957, when the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants bolted for the west coast. This fine book by Roger Kahn gives an overview of the period just prior to '57 when all three teams, including the Yankees, were at or near the top of their game.

Television was new and the color line in baseball was broken. The Era loosely follows the teams as they chase pennants, giving anecdotes not only on the players, but the owners, General Managers and the beat writers for the local tabloids. We see fading stars and promising rookies along with bombastic owners. What I found most compelling about The Era was the insight to the leadership and interpersonal styles of the managers of these teams: Durocher, Shotten, Dressen, Alston, Ott, Rigney, Harris and Stengel.

This is a quick breezy read and I recommend it to all baseball fans.