THE BOYS OF SUMMER BROOKLYN DODGERS 1955 SIGNED RARE!

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A classic that should be required reading for any sports fan
This is one of the books that I had considered reading since I was a young man in love with baseball for the first time. In a sense, I'm glad I waited all these years to finally read it. I think that I would not have enjoyed it at 14 the way I did at 28. The book is beautiful elegy and mediation on a time long gone and the men who made up it's glory. They bear littler resemblance to the stars of today. I grew up with stories of the '52 World Series and the Dodgers. This book gave me the gift of being able to exprience a bit of what my grandfather and father shared on that October day in 1952 as Joe Black took the mound against the Yankees. I've always held the Dodgers in awe (the BRooklyn version at least) and this book allows me to see the men who made up those times as real people. Pee Wee Reese emerges as Kahn's hero in the baseball parts. I would argue that his father, Gordon, was almost as heroic to him. It is beautiful book about boys, their fathers, and the ties that bind us to what is still, even in this day and age, the single greatest game ever invented. This is a classic that should be read by every fan. Thank you, Mr. Kahn.

What makes this SIGNED book so rare are the signatures on it..

1. RALPH BRANCA

Ralph Branca

Branca was 25 years old in 1951 when he entered baseball immortality with one pitch. Though he had won twenty games in 1947, his '51 season is what he is known for. He would win just 12 more games in the major leagues after that fateful October day. 

Branca was born in Mt. Vernon, New York and starred at New York University on the basketball court. In 1943 he began his professional baseball career with the Dodgers Class-D team. The next season he debuted with the Dodgers as an 18-year old rookie, pitching 21 games mostly in relief. 

In 1945 and 1946 Branca gained saw little action with the big-league club during the regular season. However, despite starting just 10 games for Brooklyn, Branca was called on to start the first playoff game in NL history, against the St. Louis Cardinals, on October 1, 1946. He lost that game and the Dodgers were eliminated in two straight.

In 1947, Branca he was entrenched in the Brooklyn rotation, winning 21 games and making the All-Star team. But in the World Series against the New York Yankees he was used out of the bullpen, winning and losing a contest in relief.

In 1948 and 1949 Branca posted 14 and 13 wins, respectively, earning All-Star nods each season. In the '49 Fall Classic he went into the 9th inning of Game Three holding the Yanks at bay in a 1-1 tie. But he faltered, and the Dodgers lost the game, a pivotal blow that could have swung the series in their favor. He would never appear in the post-season again.

Wearing #13 on his back, Branca was inconsistent in 1950-1951. In '50 he struggled to a 7-9 record and was relegated to the bullpen. In '51 he worked his way back into the rotation, following Don Newcombe and Preacher Roe as Brooklyn's #3 starter. 

It was Newcombe who Branca replaced on October 3, 1951, entering the game after coach Clyde Sukeforth told manager Chuck Dressen he had better stuff than Clem Labine (who had struck out Thomson two days later in a clutch situation).

After the infamous homer, Branca changed his uniform number and tried to avoid talking about the pitch. But it continued to haunt him into his retirement, which came in 1956 with the Dodgers after having been shipped to Detroit in 1953 and stopping off with the Yankees in 1954.

Branca later embraced his place in baseball history - teaming with Thomson on the baseball memorabilia circuit. The two are often seen resurfacing on anniversaries of the event, and in 2001 controversy arose when allegations were made that Thomson had "stolen" the signs for his famous blast.

The story of Bobby Thomsons home run off Ralph Branca to end the 1951 season and send the New York Giants to the World Series is perhaps the most famous in baseball history. Even casual baseball fans know that Thomsons home run reached mythical status as the shot heard round the world, thereby equating it with world changing political events described with those same words. Therefore, you would think that there remains little to say about this most famous of home runs.1 Joshua Pragers The Echoing Green (due out September 19, 2006) proves otherwise. In a beautifully documented and intensely engaging narrative, Prager retells a story that everyone supposedly knows and makes it interesting and surprising.

The book is part biography, part history, and part mystery. As biography, it recounts the lives of Bobby Thomson and Ralph Branca, hero and goat of the 1951 playoffs between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. While there are many fascinating details about both players, most interesting are the ways in which their lives became intertwined after the home run. For example, Thomson and Branca sang together in public, each recounting the tale of praise and blame like lovers. Branca, reciting his woe in a beautiful singing voice, brought his audience to tears; they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and together countless other times thereafter. Later in life they worked autograph shows together, appeared in old timer games, and accepted interviews in which they did everything except re-enact the moment. Prager describes the odd symbiotic relationship gracefully, not making it into more than it was, and letting the obvious pathos affect the reader without obtrusive descriptions.

2. CARL FURILLO

Appeared in The New York Times on January 22, 1989

Carl Furillo, the right fielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers during their glory years in the late 1940s and 50s, died yesterday at his home at Stony Creek Mills, Pa. He was 66 years old.

Furillo played his entire 15 year career with the Dodgers in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, taking part in seven World Series and finishing with a career batting average of .299. He hit 192 home runs and had 1,058 runs batted in.

His best season was in 1953 when he led the National League in batting with a .344 average. He won the title despite being sidelined with a broken finger incurred in a brawl. Furillo had been hit by a pitch from the New York Giants Ruben Gomez, and then charged the Giant manager, Leo Durocher.

We hated the Giants, he recalled years later. We just hated the uniform.

Furillo batted over .300 in four other seasons and drove in 90 or more runs for the Dodgers six times.

He was one of the star players for the Dodger team recalled in The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn and was a member of the only Brooklyn team that won the World Series, in 1955.

Furillo, who was raised in Lower Alsace Township, Pa., near Reading, started playing baseball as an outfielder for the Pocmoke City in the Eastern Shore League at a salary of $80 a month.

He fought his way up through the Dodger organization, where he acquired the name Reading Rifle for his fine throwing arm.

Pee Wee Reese, the former shortstop for the Dodgers, recalled a few years ago how the sign for Abe Starks clothing store at the base of the right-field wall promised a free suit to any batter who hit it on a fly.

But Furillo played right in front of it, said Reese. Nobody ever hit it.