The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn Read Free Book Online

and like the herring sometimes red. “There are two home stands. One game each should be sufficient.”
    “Bleacher seats?”
    “No,” Gordon conceded, “general admission.”
    “All right, all right, you’ll miss your boat,” Dr. Rockow said.
    On the next day, I sat behind home plate and saw the Dodgers lose to the Cubs. Then I spent an afternoon at stickball. On the day after that, I sat between third and home while the Dodgers lost to the Cubs again. August was three days old and I had exceeded my quota of major league baseball.
    “All right, allrrright, if it means so moch to you,” Dr. Rockow said, “we can both go Thursday afternoon when I don’t practice.” I saw four more games before my parents returned, two by myself and two with my grandfather. Dr. Rockow began to root for Johnny Cooney, a very smooth center fielder, and drew from me an oath never to tell my parents about the games or his own rooting. “Don’t ee-wen speak too moch of Cooney,” he said. “Bahtter these games be jost between us.”
    It is 1937. The family considers sending my sister and me to camp. The camp director, “Uncle” Lou Kleiderman, visits and asks what I like best.
    “Baseball.”
    “Wonderful,” says Uncle Lou Kleiderman, a stocky mustached man who limps and smiles. “We like boys who like baseball.”Boys? Baseball? Uncle Lou Kleiderman likes families with two parents teaching and a grandfather pulling teeth, who pay the full tuition in advance. “We have three baseball fields,” Uncle Lou says.
    “Diamonds,” corrects Gordon J. Kahn.
    “And”—the camp director is spieling, not listening—“I have pictures of them in this folder right here.”
    “A hardball diamond,” I cry.
    “That’s right, son,” says Uncle Lou, smiling, “and the baseball counselor, Uncle Iz Brown, once had a tryout for the major leagues.”
    “But hardball?” says Olga. “Won’t the child be hurt? Do you have a program in arts and crafts?”
    “Maaaa!” Who wants to twist leather into bracelets? You might as well spend a summer in school. “Who did Uncle Iz Brown play for?” I ask Uncle Lou Kleiderman.
    “Well, he went to the University of Idaho or Ohio and he can fill you in on the rest.” Uncle Lou’s smile is beginning to turn.
    “Gore-don. Aren’t injuries more likely in hardball?”
    “We have a full-time physician, Dr. Hy Kogelman, and a nurse.” Uncle Lou’s face quivers and the smile is gone. Superior medical care is nothing to smile at.
    “I dislocated a shoulder sliding once,” Gordon Kahn says. “I was stretching a single into a double.”
    “Good for you,” says Uncle Lou, confused by the terminology.
    “But I was only out for a few seconds,” Gordon says, not wanting to cause a fuss.
    “What does Kogelman think of focus of infection?” says Dr. Rockow.
    Uncle Lou winces, makes a gastric noise and promises to mail Dr. Rockow a photograph of the infirmary. “First thing in the morning. First-class mail.”
    “Pip, pip,” says Emily Kahn. She is six and she has learned therule of the house. Whether you have something to say is unimportant. What is important is to make a sound.
    “How’s that shoulder now?” Uncle Lou says. Gordon explains that the effect is most severe when he serves a tennis ball and he is still explaining when he signs the contract to send us to Camp Al-Gon-Kwit. “A real athletic family,” says Uncle Lou Kleiderman. “That’s what we like to see.” Ooops, wrong coda. Olga’s face freezes in horror.
    “Would you believe,” Uncle Lou says, desperately, “they’re some who say Jews are afraid of sports?” But Olga glares him to the door.
    Since I will play first base for the Dodgers, my new glove is a first baseman’s mitt, big, heavy and, for $2.95, stiff as a shirt cardboard. To soften a glove, you work neats-foot oil into the palm and fingers and when the oil dries into a stain, soft mottled brown on tan, you place a hardball in the pocket. You put one