Books like Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers

Bums takes you back to a time when baseball was as much a part of your life as church and community. Baseball was the fans and the players. For the fans it was a game that was a very real part of you. Players played the game for the love of the game and won as a team not as individuals. When owners like O’Malley took it away and made it a business the fans lost something special; a feeling that can’t be duplicated in any other sport. Players lost too. Some of the real colorful players were lost to the owners imposed conformity.I highly recommend this book. Take the time to just sit and enjoy reading it while you visit Brooklyn in the early days. When you arrived first thing in the morning in front of the local store to await the morning newspaper so you would be first to hear how the Dodgers did. Play stickball in the streets pretending to be your favorite player, and gathering up bottles to get enough money to get into Ebbets Field. You can never go back, but through this wonderfully written book we can all go for a visit.