Doris Kearns Goodwin's Book Recalls The Major Leagues' Age Of Innocence

PHILADELPHIA - Once upon a time, a thousand years ago, February 1950, to be exact, Roy Campanella came to Rockville Center, a Long Island suburb, to speak at the Church of the Ascension, an Episcopal church a block from St. Agnes, the Catholic Church.

Doris Kearns trembled. At the distance. At the danger. She was a little girl then, a devout Catholic, a devout Dodgers fan. Campanella was her father's favorite ballplayer.

Did she dare ask him to take her to hear Campanella speak, knowing the church's prohibition against participating in the service of another church? They went, sat in the second row. She shook Campy's hand afterward, thanked him for being a Dodger, for coming to her town.

And then, First Confession preceding First Communion, she confessed that she had sinned, walking into that Episcopal church to hear Campanella. Forgiven, she rambled on, she'd disobeyed her mom five times, wished harm to others several times, fibbed three times, talked back to her teacher twice.

The priest was sharp. To whom did she wish harm?

To Allie Reynolds, to Robin Roberts, to Richie Ashburn, to Enos Slaughter, to Phil Rizzuto, to Alvin Dark. All the injuries, of course, healing once the baseball season ended.

The priest confessed that he too loved the Dodgers, and that he believed that some day they would win the World Series fair and square. And wouldn't that feel better? For penance, two Hail Marys, three Our Fathers, and a plea to say a special prayer for the Dodgers.

It is the sweetest, loveliest anecdote in a sweet, lovely book by Doris Kearns Goodwin called "Wait Till Next Year."

First, this disclaimer. I did not appreciate Goodwin's participation in Ken Burns's interminable documentary about baseball, mainly because I disliked 90 percent of that television epic, all those lily-gilding, professorial types glorifying and romanticizing and pontificating.

Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, author of books about the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, Lyndon B. Johnson. "Wait Till Next Year" is about a young girl growing up in a Long Island suburb in the '50s, before supermarkets swallowed up corner butchers, before glitzy ice-cream parlors chased the pharmacy soda fountain with the spinning stools.

There are lots of memoirs out there these days, about hardscrabble poverty, about incest, about drugs and booze and manic depression. Goodwin's book is an orchid in that swamp, to be savored by fathers and daughters.

It was her father who urged her to run for class office, to try out for school plays, to speak up in class if she had something to contribute. And it was her father who took her to Ebbets Field to watch their beloved Dodgers.

He worked in a bank. She listened to games on the radio, keeping score as he had taught her to do. And when he came home, and poured a ritual Manhattan for himself and her mom, Doris recited the play-by-play for him, every batter, every inning.

She learned to structure a narrative from those breathless recapitulations. Her mom, a shut-in due to heart problems, encouraged Doris to read and eventually to write.

Once a Pulitzer Prize historian, always a Pulitzer Prize historian. Goodwin revisited Rockville Center, hunted down old neighbors, childhood chums, matching their memories against hers, fearful that time and emotion might warp the truth.

"Wait till next year" was the rallying cry for Brooklyn fans in the early '50s. For those of us of the Giants persuasion, it was a scornful insult, with the growling emphasis on "next."

Goodwin recaptures it all, the raucous clatter of Ebbets Field, Hilda Chester's cowbell and the Sym-phony, and the "Hit Sign, Win Suit" sign at the base of the scoreboard in right-center field.

I remember getting Pete Reiser's autograph on the gray, inner lining of a box of gumdrops. Goodwin remembers influencing baseball history with a gift to a struggling Gil Hodges.

She'd won a St. Christopher's medal in a competition based on knowledge of the catechism, beating out the favorite, a girl from St. Agnes. Hodges, mired in an early-season slump that year, was making an appearance at Wolf's Sports Shop on Sunrise Highway.

When she reached the head of a long line waiting for Hodges's autograph, she handed the Brooklyn first baseman a box with the medal inside. She launched into a monologue, explaining that the medal had been blessed by the Pope, that she'd won it in a catechism contest when she knew the seventh deadly sin was gluttony, that she thought St. Christopher would watch over his swing so that he cold return home safely each time he went to bat, which would make him feel good and would make her feel good and would make Dodgers fans all over the world feel good.

Hodges accepted the medal graciously, countered with a story of his own, how he had given a similar medal to his coal-miner father.

The next day, the Dodgers started a long road trip. Hodges started hitting. By the first week in June, he was leading the majors with 17 homers in 44 games. Sports writers decided the hitting streak was traceable to being on the road, to restful sleep undisturbed by a crying infant.

Goodwin knew better.

Robinson became her favorite player. Ultimately, she got his autograph. He personalized it, writing "Keep your smile a long, long while. Jackie Robinson."

She watched, fascinated, as he changed his ballpark demeanor, as he stopped turning the other cheek. She gasped in disbelief when he was traded to the hated Giants before deciding to retire.

Her mom died, her dad mourned, unable to hide his broken heart. They moved away from the neighborhood, away from friends, from the butchers who called her "Ragmop" and teased her when her beloved Dodgers lost to their beloved Giants.

And then, the Giants and the Dodgers fled to California, the butchers were gone, replaced by a wide-aisled supermarket. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. Malls everywhere. An apartment complex where Ebbets Field used to be.

Doris Kearns Goodwin kept the score sheets. And now, once again, with feeling, she has constructed a narrative around them, and written a sweet, lovely book.

About baseball, about a simpler time, about fathers and daughters.