Games We Used To Play: book review

Games We Used To Play is actually a history book. It is about professional sports in America from 1947 to 1990. Written by Roger Kahn, it is a collection of pieces he wrote for

Prominent news publications: 

• The New York Herald Tribune
• The American Scholar
• Sports Illustrated
• The Saturday Evening Post
• Esquire
• Sport
• Time
• The New York Times
• Playboy
• Newsweek

And others. His methodology was to spend time with his subjects. Sometimes several days, and even travel with them. He wrote about the players, ballparks, management, owners, other writers, and cultural trends. Kahn had a lot to say. He tried to be accurate and fair. However, he wasn’t without his blind spots. Roger Kahn, who loved to play baseball, drink, and had an eye for beautiful women, was in awe of Mickey Mantle. Subsequently he seemed to give him a pass on his womanizing and alcoholism. A sort of “boys will be boys” attitude.

Ted Williams, “Teddy ballgame”, he called an “egocentric emotionalist in need of a spanking.”

In my notes I wrote:

Kahn, full of himself. Why he hates Joe Namath & Teddy Ballgame? Projection of his Shadow?

It’s hard to say. Kahn died in 2012. He was Jewish and his son died of a heroin overdose in 1987. Kahn had this to say about Brooklyn:

Jewish children who would grow up to teach philosophy lived beside incipient terrorists who became loan sharks, basketball fixers, even killers. … Brooklyn was troubled — it is a dangerous fiction that urban troubles are new — and contentious and disparate and joined.

He writes about racism, sexism , and bigotry as it existed throughout those 40 plus years. The corruption that TV’s money and fame have on some people. Most people?

Subjects were:

• Jackie Robinson
• Willie Mays
• Stan Musial
• Roger Maris
• Mickey Mantle
• Joe Namath
• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
• Don King
• Muhammad Ali
• George Foreman
• Tommy Lasorda
• Pete Rose

And others. And so much more. Such as: The psychology of the athlete. What it’s like to always be special, and then past your prime at the age of thirty-five. When most men are just hitting their stride. How most athletes don’t read books; but make millions of dollars from their own “autobiographies”.

Conclusion.

Should you read this book? Definitely, if you are a young sports fan. (The book details what life was like before The Internet.) Maybe, if you’re an old sports fan, like me. (You might not like what your heroes were like off the field.)  Probably not, if you’re one of those special few who are good enough to make it to the show. (It’s a hard look in the mirror.) For sure, if you’re an aspiring sport journalist. It’s good writing. For the most part good journalism.