Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin

In the current wild-card era, a team that fails to win a division title can get a second chance. The Dodgers set a new record for wins by a defending champion. The Dodgers fell just short of another division crown, tying a franchise record with 106 wins. Los Angeles and San Francisco were once again fighting it out for the division championship in the last game of the season of 2021. And even more solemnly, baseball owners broke her heart when both the Dodgers and Giants moved to California in 1958.įast-forward to today. “It was the worst day of my life as a fan,” she wrote. But the “Shot Heard Round the World” broke her heart as the rivalry between the Dodgers and Giants peaked. The Dodgers won five pennants in eight years and the team’s first world championship. Jackie Robinson was Goodwin’s favorite player. Raised as Catholics, Goodwin’s dramatic stories of religion-based guilt through the eyes of a child felt like they were plucked from my subconscious. Ooms, fathers and siblings were huge baseball fans who also made extraordinary impacts on our lives. Goodwin’s mom died of a heart ailment when Goodwin was 15.

My house and my neighborhood growing up in Troy in the 1970s were divided as Mets and Yankees fans.īoth of our moms died at age 51. Goodwin grew up in Rockville Centre on the South Shore of Long Island and the neighborhood was divided between Yankees fans, Giants fans and Dodgers fans. My family taught me as well and I did it whenever I saw a major league game in person, from visits to Olympic Stadium in Montreal to my beloved Mets at Shea. In each of the nine seasons from 1949 to 1957 - spanning much of my childhood - we would watch one of the three New York teams - the Dodgers, the Giants, or the Yankees - compete in the World Series,” she writes in the first chapter. “I had the luck to fall in love with baseball at the start of an era of pure delight for New York fans. Join today at: See More CollapseĪnd what a time it was to be a baseball fan. This column is sponsored by Times Union the Capital Region’s network of business and professional women. Women's Open purse soars to $10 million on fabled courses. Read about Chen, who now wants people to step up and help others get through the devastating disaster, via a profile on UAlbany women’s soccer sports website. Her UAlbany family came through, helping to raise almost $50,000 for her and her family. UAlbany soccer goalie and captain Sophia Chen - who I profiled in this column for her advocacy for LGBTQ rights and her leadership in the face of adversity - lost her childhood home in the Colorado wildfires in late December.

Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin