Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, November 27, 1993                   TAG: 9311270061
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: C-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Reviewed by JACK BOGACZYK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

KAHN SCORES WITH 'THE ERA'

By Roger Kahn. Ticknor & Fields. $22.95.

Roger Kahn may be the best chronicler baseball readers will ever enjoy. He's certainly at the top of the batting order, with Roger Angell. Kahn writes about baseball without getting bogged down in numbers, like so many current authors and lovers of the game have.

Kahn's "The Boys of Summer," published 21 years ago about the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s, was more than a baseball book. It delved into our nation and its change in the post-war days. "The Era" builds and expands on those boys. His "Era," 1947-57, was when "the Yankees, Giants and Dodgers ruled the world."

Or at least they ruled the pennant races. New York was the most important city in the world, Kahn asserts, and baseball was a major reason. So, he takes readers from the year when the color line was broken, as Jackie Robinson became a Dodger, until '57, when the National League's two New York teams moved to California.

Each of those teams won at least one World Series in those years, but Kahn's work isn't about games as much as it delves into people and their times. It's a social commentary, too, from those 11 seasons.

It is not a book of hero worship, and it's obvious, after 354 pages, that while Kahn was intrigued by his subjcets of four decades ago, he also knew their foibles. He explains why Robinson wasn't really the first choice of the Dodgers to break the color barrier. He details why manager Leo Durocher's one-year suspension was tied as much to the Catholic Church as baseball.

Did you know that one night Ted Williams was traded for Joe DiMaggio? Not many baseball fans know that, but Kahn did, and he writes how two drinking club executives made the swap until one sobered up the next day and called it off. That wasn't the only decision involving alcohol Kahn's era.

Kahn covered all three teams for the New York Herald Tribune, and it shows. The only disappointment in the book is its quick run through the last four years of The Era, when one is expecting the detail he gave to the earlier years.

It's still a very intriguing read. It provides the answer to "Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?" and more.