Daily Times

Author Roger Kahn, perhaps best known for his 1972 best-selling book “The Boys of Summer” that nostalgically romanticized the Brooklyn Dodgers of a bygone era, died Thursday at the age of 92.

His son, Gordon Jacques Kahn, confirmed that his father died in a nursing home in Mamaroneck, NY Kahn was a true-blue New Yorker from the day he was born, residing primarily in hometown Brooklyn and Manhattan before most recently living in Stone Ridge, N.Y. During his writing career, his positions included New York Herald Tribune copy boy, Newsweek sports editor, Esquire magazine columnist and professor at three colleges.

Kahn wrote at least 20 books, and often waxed poetic about baseball, the sport he loved as a child. He also collaborated with Pete Rose for a 1989 book before the all-time hits leader was banned from the game, and wrote a biography of legendary boxer Jack Dempsey.

Yet it was “The Boys of Summer” that made him famous as readers found his story incredibly heartwarming but not smarmy.

He borrowed his book title from a Dylan Thomas poem, and rhapsodized about a team that he worshiped as a child, then covered in the 1950s, including such classic players as Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges and Pee Wee Reese.

One of those players he recalled fielding bounces off the wall at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field was Carl Furillo. Kahn wrote about the outfielder’s life after the game had passed him by, a passage that appeared Friday in the Los Angeles Times.

“The carom of life is harder for Carl Furillo to play. … He is a bitter hardhat putting elevators in Manhattan office buildings. He thinks baseball used him badly. `The bad leg had me walking funny and I had to have two operations for a ruptured disk. That comes on account of the injury but I figure, flip it, I gotta take care of myself. … ‘ The question that dangles, or caroms, is the bitterness justified? Or is it `E-9’ for the right fielder in the larger playing field of life?”

Born in Brooklyn on Oct. 31, 1927, Kahn lived through the suicide of his son Roger, and the divorce from his second wife following a long legal battle.

He leaves behind his third wife Katherine Johnson, son Gordon, daughter Alissa Avril and five grandchildren. His funeral will be held on Feb. 10 in Katonah, NY.