Praying for Gil Hodges: A Memoir of the 1955 World Series and One Family's Love of the Brooklyn Dodgers Book

A remarkable blend of memoir and baseball history from the acclaimed Boston Globe columnist and NPR political commentator- coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Brooklyn's World Series Championship W ritten with power and clarity, this is a brilliant work capturing the majesty of baseball, the issue of race in America, and the love one young boy, his parents and the borough of Brooklyn had for their team.Praying for Gil Hodgesis built around a detailed reconstruction of the seventh game of the 1955 World Series, which has always been on the short list of historic events in baseball lore. Pitch by pitch and inning by inning, Tom Oliphant creates a relentless melodrama. He weaves into this legendary baseball event the larger issues of race, class, Brooklyn, and the transformative power of sports in postwar America. Even more powerful are his winning memories of his own family's story and their time together on that fateful Game Seven day. Every once in a while a book provides a view of a certain America and whether it is The Greatest Generation, Big Russ and Me or Wait Till Next Year-these works strike a chord with readers everywhere. Praying for Gil Hodgesis such a book.Read More