Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir

Additional Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir Information

Wait Till Next Yearis the story of a young girl growing up in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, when owning a single-family home on a tree-lined street meant the realization of dreams, when everyone knew everyone else on the block, and the children gathered in the streets to play from sunup to sundown. The neighborhood was equally divided among Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans, and the corner stores were the scenes of fierce and affectionate rivalries.

We meet the people who influenced Goodwin's early life: her father, who emerged from a traumatic childhood without a trace of self-pity or rancor and who taught his daughter early on that she should say whatever she thought and should bring her voice into any conversation at any time; her mother, whose heart problems left her with the arteries of a seventy-year-old when she was only in her thirties and whose love of books allowed her to break the boundaries of the narrow world to which she was confined by her chronic illness; her two older sisters; her friends on the block; the local storekeepers; her school friends and teachers.

This is also the story of a girlhood in which the great religious festivals of the Catholic church and the seasonal imperatives of baseball combined to produce a passionate love of history, ceremony, and ritual. It is the story of growing up in what seemed on the surface a more innocent era until one recalls the terror of polio, the paranoia of McCarthyism reflected even in the children's games, the obsession with A-bomb drills in school, and the ugly face of racial prejudice. It was a time whose relative tranquillity contained the seeds of the turbulent decade of the sixties.

What Customers Say About Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir:

As I read it I was thinking it was as if it was my life story. I read the sports page and soon figured out how to understand the box scores. Still, we kids had our favorite teams. My life also wasn't as touched by the political atmosphere of the 50s as Doris's was, probably because of where we live, but as she related the events it did bring back memories. well, except for all that my story is almost the same as Doris Kearns Goodwin's. We lived in a small town where MLB was only a voice on the radio. My son gave me this book for Christmas knowing that I grew up in the 50's and loved the Dodgers. They even wore cast-off Dodger uniforms and eventually a couple even made it to the "bigs." So while, unlike Doris who actually interacted with the "real" Dodgers I did have a taste of the boys in blue all the way out here in the southwest.

And although I was confused when the Dodgers moved to California I wasn't as personally distressed as Doris. Then, lo and behold, our town got a D class minor league team which was part of the Dodgers farm system. But the bringing in of TV, the playing with the kids in the neighborhood, moms who were always home, teachers who taught instead of filling out government forms, all those beautiful memories. I learned what "bleeding Dodger blue" meant and began to learn the names of the players. well, except I'm just bit older, grew up in Oklahoma, I'm not Catholic, my mother is still alive at age 91, I've never seen a Dodger's game in person, I'm the oldest in my family, I'm not a Democrat, my relationship with my dad was not as close (he worked all the time and didn't care for "games"). Our school had already integrated before the Little Rock incident.

I was in about the fourth grade when my best friend announced she was a Yankee fan and since the Yankees were playing the Dodgers, just to be contentious I suppose, I became a Dodger fan. Gil Hodges was my favorite. And I had a boyfriend who wanted us to go out and look for Sputnik, too. thanks, I was a wonderful life

I rarely find myself visualizing any written work particularly clearly, and so it is a great compliment I pay to Doris Kearns Goodwin when I say that I lost myself in a vivid, nearly tangible, recreation of her childhood.From her mother (ailing with "the heart of a seventy year old woman") to next door neighbor Elaine, from Jackie Robinson to the local Giants fan butchers who called her "Ragmop," no one is simply background for her life. In Wait Till Next Year, Doris Kearns Goodwin revisits her own childhood in 1950s Brooklyn. I am still in awe of how, at six years of age, she would listen to every radio broadcast of every game and keep score throughout all nine innings so she could recreate the games in their entirety for her father at night. There are eight chapters, each more or less dedicated to one year of her youth. Because of the growing nature of childhood, each year also addresses its own themes--even though the underlying theme of this memoir is her relationship to the Brooklyn Dodgers. There are heartbreaking passages of loss; I literally teared up during the epilogue.I came of age forty years after Kearns Goodwin in a small town outside Louisville, Kentucky and yet her vivid portrayal of so many universal themes made this one of the most accessible memoirs I have yet read. Do not Wait Till Next Year; put this at the top of your reading queue.

This moving story appeals at multiple levels. Baseball fans will, of course, enjoy it, and Ms. Kearns Goodwin's ability to intertwine her personal tale with the events of the times make the book well worth the time for anyone who enjoys looking into our country's past, or, quite simply, anyone who enjoys a good story. She makes the reader laugh on one page, and before the end of the next, they're crying.

More than just a story about baseball - a story about growing up in the fifties. Families, friends and neighborhoods. A very nostalgic look back into time. Excellent.

My book arrived quickly but was more "beaten up" than I expected from the product preview.