Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers by Peter Golenbock is exactly what it says on the tin. It is an oral history, which means the book is stitched together mostly out of firsthand accounts - players, managers, executives, sportswriters, and fans - with Golenbock providing just enough connective tissue to keep the timeline moving.
We read it in the fall of 2022 and it turned out to be one of the better baseball books we have picked up. Below are our notes, chapter by chapter.
The Setup
The Brooklyn Dodgers were, until 1957, one of the two National League teams in New York (the other being the Giants), and the Dodgers are one of the great tragic love stories in American sports. They lost, and lost, and lost, and then finally won a championship in 1955, and then two years later Walter O'Malley moved the team to Los Angeles and the borough of Brooklyn never really recovered.
The nickname "Bums" was affectionate. Sort of.
Chapter-by-Chapter
Prologue. Sets the stage. Establishes why Brooklyn and its baseball team had a relationship that was different in kind from other city-team relationships. Introduces the oral history format and the "Bums" nickname.
Chapter 1 - The Daffiness Boys. Covers the pre-WWII years. This is the era of Babe Herman getting hit on the head with fly balls, Casey Stengel managing the team into and out of trouble, and the general reputation of the Dodgers as lovably incompetent. Ebbets Field is the third character.
Chapter 2 - MacPhail. Larry MacPhail arrives as general manager in the late 1930s. He is the person who brings night baseball to Ebbets Field, brings radio broadcasts (with Red Barber calling games), and generally drags the Dodgers into professional respectability. Team gets competitive. Wins the 1941 pennant. Loses the World Series to the Yankees, which is the beginning of a pattern.
Chapter 3 - Rickey. Branch Rickey arrives after MacPhail leaves for war service (and then, later, jumps to the Yankees). Rickey builds out a minor-league farm system, which was a serious strategic innovation at the time. The chapter sets up the next one.
Chapter 4 - The Noble Experiment. The Jackie Robinson chapter. It is the emotional center of the book. Golenbock gets voices from Robinson himself (via earlier interviews), teammates like Pee Wee Reese, opponents, Rickey, and observers. The abuse Robinson faced is described directly, not softened. His talent and his composure both come through. This chapter is worth the price of the book on its own.
Chapter 5 - The Boys of Summer. The core roster that would define the 1940s and 1950s Dodgers: Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, Roy Campanella, Carl Furillo, Carl Erskine, Preacher Roe, Pee Wee Reese, Billy Cox. The chapter is mostly personalities and clubhouse chemistry, and it is a lot of fun.
Chapter 6 - Wait 'Til Next Year. The heartbreak chapter. Repeated losses to the Yankees in the World Series. The 1951 playoff loss to the Giants on Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard 'Round the World." The rivalry with the Giants, which was intense in a way that modern baseball rivalries mostly are not. And the perennial fan slogan that names the chapter.
Chapter 7 - Nineteen Fifty-Five. The one year they won it all. After all the near-misses, the Dodgers beat the Yankees in the 1955 World Series. Johnny Podres's Game 7 shutout gets the spotlight. The chapter captures a level of borough-wide joy that is very hard to imagine now.
Chapter 8 - The End. The move. Walter O'Malley consolidates power after Rickey leaves, decides he wants a new stadium, runs into Robert Moses in the process, and eventually decides Los Angeles is a better bet than Brooklyn. Players, sportswriters, and fans express shock, betrayal, and grief in that order. The 1957 season is the last one in Brooklyn.
Epilogue. Reflections on what the team meant, what the borough lost, and what the departure symbolized about postwar American cities in general.
What Makes the Book Good
The oral history format works because so many of the primary sources were still alive when Golenbock did the interviews. You get Pee Wee Reese talking about Jackie Robinson in his own voice. You get Ebbets Field vendors and ticket-takers remembering what it smelled like. You get sportswriters talking about deadlines and games they covered from the press box.
If you want a synthesized, analytical baseball history, this is not that book. Golenbock's editorial hand is light. He is stitching, not arguing.
If you want to hear what it was like to be there, this is that book.
Recommended If
- You like baseball history.
- You like New York history.
- You have ever wondered why Brooklyn is the way Brooklyn is.
- You want a Jackie Robinson chapter that treats him as a person and an athlete instead of an icon.
References
- Golenbock, Peter. Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Contemporary Books, 1984.
- Our wiki notes: https://charlesreid1.com/wiki/Bums