Home Stand

By R.Z. Sheppard

THE BOYS OF SUMMER by ROGER KAHN 442 pages. Harper & Row. $8.95.

What is to be made of this nostalgic book about the Brooklyn Dodgers? Its title comes from a poem by Dylan Thomas, and its first chapter is called "Lines on the Transpontine Madness." "Transpontine": a very British word meaning that which lies over a bridge, specifically one that crosses the Thames. For reasons too academic to mention, it also means melodramatic.

This is the sort of pretentiousness one might expect from a New York Giants fan, which 44-year-old Roger Kahn could well have been if he had grown up on Manhattan's Upper West Side instead of a trolley lurch from Ebbets Field. But to Kahn, who covered the Dodgers for the New York Herald Tribune in the early '50s, baseball wasn't just baseball. It was--well --transpontine. Between Kahn and the game flowed the mainstream of American experience. On his side was a Jewish family life in which culture was spelled with a capital K. On the other side were those muscular, spitting, foulmouthed heroes in flannel knickers who represented an ideal of American manhood.

Luckily, Kahn's world of poetry and pop-ups resolved itself on the Herald Tribune, where he was eventually assigned to cover the Dodgers' 1952 and '53 seasons. These were the years when the Dodgers again lost the World Series to the Yankees, when the cry of "Wait'll next year!" rose over Flatbush. After Brooklyn finally defeated their Bronx rival in 1955 and then resumed their brilliant bumbling, the cry became "Wait'll last year!" The team was still one of the most exciting ever to take the field. There were Furillo's long, accurate throws from right field, Billy Cox's impossible, spidery stops at third, and Preacher Roe's spitballs.

Outclassing them all was Jackie Robinson. Much of what Kahn says about the Dodger infielder will be familiar to former members of Happy Felton's Knothole Gang. There is Robinson, first Negro in the majors: the racial abuse he endured on and off the field, his testiness, the later tragedy of his son's delinquency and fatal car crash. What Kahn does is rekindle for a younger, less patient generation the pride of a remarkable athlete who wanted to be recognized and paid as such. That Robinson eventually be came a prosperous, overweight Republican has a perfect and glorious consistency.

Kahn presents a number of other middle-aged ex-Dodgers in formula pieces that will appeal mainly to those who sang the national anthem along with Gladys Goodding and lost interest in the Dodgers after they went to Los Angeles to become ballplayers to the stars. He also touches a lot of other bases, sentimentalizing about his newspaper days, describing the selection of his father's coffin, visiting the apartment buildings where cozy Ebbets Field once stood. The tone throughout is unashamedly elegiac, though not totally uncalculated. Kahn's love and respect for his subjects provide a sensitive measurement of the years -- years that have seen football all but replace baseball as the No. 1 national sport. The change says a lot, because the difference between the two games is crucial. Baseball is a noble, romantic game that spurns time by expanding into extra innings. Football, with a sweep-second hand constantly at one's throat, is too much like real life. .R.Z. Sheppard

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