30 Books in 30 Beach Days Day 19: "Wait Til Next Year"
Are you shocked? This is the first time I've ever written a review for a work of non-fiction here.
It feels weird.
But summer wouldn't be summer without at least one nod to that age-old summertime sport: baseball. Even if you could take or leave the game itself, you can certainly appreciate that baseball is an exceedingly literary sport. Steeped in nostalgia, and slow-moving enough to spin a storyline, baseball is the sport for the bookish.
Which is why it's not surprising that presidential biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin loved the sport as a child growing up a Brooklyn Dodgers fan in the suburbs of New York. Wait Til Next Year is lighter fare than the tomes that catapulted her to (and retained her) fame: No Ordinary Time (about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt), Team of Rivals (about Lincoln) and The Bully Pulpit (about Teddy Roosevelt). This is the story of precocious little girl's love for her parents, for baseball, and for the everlasting hope that kept her returning to Ebbets Field.
The memoir reads like a novel, and Goodwin's openness and skill make her main character -- her decades-younger self -- lovable. Goodwin is masterfully able to capture a snapshot in time, and her story of her fascination with the Dodgers right before they left Brooklyn serves as a metaphor for her childhood, and for a more innocent time across the country.
If you've ever loved a team, or a family, or even a hot dog -- make this your next beach read.
Rating: 5/5
