1955. Brooklyn. Dodgers. Dem Bums. Robinson. Giants. Yankees. New York. The Golden Age of baseball. The Cold War. Coney Island. Television... Philip Goldberg's This is Next Year (Ballentine: 1992) paints a rich tapestry before which his protagonist, eleven-year old Roger Stone walks. If you've read The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn, the character of Roger Stone is a conglomeration of the stereotypical Brooklynite. He lives and dies with his Dodgers; his passion for "dem Bums" never wanes. Roger narrates the 1955 season when the Dodgers made it to the World Series - lead by Snider, Robinson, Hodges and Reese - and finally beat the dreaded Yankees. This is Next Year is not just a baseball story, but a coming-of-age tale. Roger's story leads us through the streets and back alleys of Brooklyn during the mid-50s: the novel is filled with references to stickball games, egg creams and cherry cokes; everyone smoking cigarettes or having a hot dog at Nathan's, and schoolkids with earphones listening to baseball games during class.
Along with the scenery, we are introduced to Roger's family - his two brothers Hubbell and Hank("Round Man") - like Roger (after Rogers Hornsby) - named after stars of the age: Carl Hubbell, and Hank Greenberg. And there are his friends: Klinger and Iggy, as well as a host of other characters Roger goes to school and plays stickball with, and who generally hang out on the street corner arguing the merits of various ballplayers or the virtues of girls who they are acquainted. Apart from Roger's parents, the other adults - equally as engaging as Roger's school-age friends - are neighbors and shopkeepers from the immediate vicinity, but each have their supporting roles in the overall flow of the story.
And, then there's "The Thing": Roger's conception of fate. Named after the monster of the 1951 film, The Thing is Roger's method of reconciling why his beloved Dodgers continue to flail away at success, as well as his own 6th grade trials and tribulations. When something doesn't work out, it is because The Thing reared its fatalistic head.
At times, Goldberg seems to go a bit overboard with his narrative. If Next Year were a painting, it would be crowded with detail of Brooklyn and the events and culture of the mid-20th century. But perhaps this is the point - we are led through a tale, not by that 11 year-old boy, but by his aging memory. A memory that projects like a feature film: fade to black as the story begins and the entire tale is a movie flash-back projected onto the big screen. Instead of a backdrop larger than life (and mostly out of sight to a youngster), we have the scene set by someone who can look back and see his surroundings.
I remember that after I read this book for the first time - shortly after it was released in 1992 - I thought it was a very good story, full of tiny details; not entirely a baseball novel, but a story of a boy growing up in the shadow of bigger things. I would still recommend This is Next Year, but probably throw in a caveat or two about the overwhelming minutiae that accompanies the story. Overall, though, it is an enjoyable read. Goldberg initially promised that Next Year would be the first of a trilogy - presumably to follow along until the Dodgers left for Los Angeles, or so. But no sequels have ever appeared. Goldberg went on to a career in inspirational books. This is Next Year has been his only novel.
World Series, by John R. Tunis (Harcourt Brace: 1941)
In Tunis' sequel to The Kid From Tomkinsville (Harcourt Brace: 1940), Roy Tucker and his Brooklyn teammates took on Cleveland and their ace hurler, Gene Miller (modeled after Indian Bob Feller). The fictional series went seven action- and drama-filled games, including attempts to cheat, beanings, and sensational home run saving catches. Tunis, of course, had the Dodgers take the Series (4 games to 3). The Dodgers appeared in the actual 1941 Series, but lost to the Yankees. (During the 1940 season, the Dodgers and Indians each finished second in their respective leagues, and when crafting his second Tucker novel, Tunis may have thought the two would have a good chance at meeting in the series).
Here are a few other novels that include World Series play:
Curveball, Kate Angell
Blue Ruin, Brendan C. Boyd
The Greatest Slump of All Time, David Carkeet
This is Next Year, Philip Goldberg
A Pennant for the Kremlin, Paul Malloy
Just Joe: Baseball's Natural, as Told by His Wife, Thomas Perry
How I Helped the Chicago Cubs (Finally!) Win the World Series, Harper Scott
The Final Game, Robert W. Shoemaker
Hoopla, Harry Stein
Killing the Curse, Jeff Stratton
Good luck to the Giants and Rangers in this year's championship.
Bobby Thomson passed away this week. A lifetime .270 hitter, Thomson played over half his career with the Giants. He hit over 260 home runs, but he is most remembered for the one he hit in the bottom of the ninth in the 1951 playoff series against the Dodgers. That home run climaxed an amazing comeback by the Giants, in which they made up a 13 1/2 game deficit during the last two months of the season.
While there have been numerous books written about that game, and countless re-tellings in others, I want to mention two: Pafko at the Wall, by Don DeLillo (Scribner:1997) and Miracle Ball: My Hunt for the Shot Heard 'Round the World, by Brian Biegael (Crown: 2009). While DeLillo's work is fiction and Biegal's is a semi-autobiographical tale, both center around what might have happened to the ball Thomson hit out of the Polo Grounds that day in October, 1951. That ball disappeared in the melee that occurred with the celebration and there has been disagreement as to what actually happened to the ball.
DeLillo's novella is taken from his larger Underworld. In the story, Cotter Martin is a black teenager from who sneaks into the game and ends up wrenching the ball away from the hands of a playing-hooky aquaintance, Bill Waterson - a white middle-aged businessman. Chased through the streets, Cotter is offered various amounts of money for the ball, but he wants to keep it, as a remembrance of the day. In the end, Martin escapes into the alleyways of Harlem, while his pursuer is forced to retreat back to familiar territory.
Brian Biegael's father always claimed that he was the one ended up with the home run ball, and would regale his family and friends as to how he came to obtain it. Grown up, and now a reporter, Biegael decided to determine whether the baseball his father had was the one Bobby Thomson hit and, if not, then the true story of its disappearance. His book reads like a detective story, in which he searches through documents, interviews people and players, and in the end arrives at an almost unimaginable ending. I won't spoil the ending, because the book is a well written page-turner but, like me, I'm sure you will wonder if Biegael's findings define the end of the story.
The Bobby Thomson home run is one of the great stories of baseball, along with Joe DiMaggio's 56 game hit streak, Bill Buckner's error, and Willie Mays' over-the-shoulder catch. I'm sure most players dream of hitting a game-winning home run or pitching a perfect game, while others dream of just getting the chance to play in the Majors. Bobby Thomson certainly accomplished the dream of many. As for the ball he hit - who knows? Perhaps it's on a shelf somewhere, buried under odds and ends in a box, or rotting away in a landfill. In the end, whatever its fate, the mystery just makes for a good story.
1955. Brooklyn. Dodgers. Dem Bums. Robinson. Giants. Yankees. New York. The Golden Age of baseball. The Cold War. Coney Island. Television... Philip Goldberg's This is Next Year (Ballentine: 1992) paints a rich tapestry before which his protagonist, eleven-year old Roger Stone walks. If you've read The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn, the character of Roger Stone is a conglomeration of the stereotypical Brooklynite. He lives and dies with his Dodgers; his passion for "dem Bums" never wanes. Roger narrates the 1955 season when the Dodgers made it to the World Series - lead by Snider, Robinson, Hodges and Reese - and finally beat the dreaded Yankees. This is Next Year is not just a baseball story, but a coming-of-age tale. Roger's story leads us through the streets and back alleys of Brooklyn during the mid-50s: the novel is filled with references to stickball games, egg creams and cherry cokes; everyone smoking cigarettes or having a hot dog at Nathan's, and schoolkids with earphones listening to baseball games during class.
I remember that after I read this book for the first time - shortly after it was released in 1992 - I thought it was a very good story, full of tiny details; not entirely a baseball novel, but a story of a boy growing up in the shadow of bigger things. I would still recommend This is Next Year, but probably throw in a caveat or two about the overwhelming minutiae that accompanies the story. Overall, though, it is an enjoyable read. Goldberg initially promised that Next Year would be the first of a trilogy - presumably to follow along until the Dodgers left for Los Angeles, or so. But no sequels have ever appeared. Goldberg went on to a career in inspirational books. This is Next Year has been his only novel.
