The Bookshelf Conversations #167: John Rosengren

July 18, 2023

As I sadly acknowledge in the video, history should be a lot older than me. Fifty years takes up a major portion of my life which means I’m old.

Anyway…

John Rosengren, author of The Greatest Summer in Baseball History: How the ’73 Season Changed Us Forever, had to explain the use of “forever,” one of my pet-peeve title words, which he did to my satisfaction. It truly was a watershed year, the introduction of the designated hitter, one icon coming on the scene in the larger-than-life persona of Reggie Jackson juxtaposed with the departure of another legend in Willie Mays as well as Hank Aaron’s gradual but continued progress on wresting the title of all-time home run king from the beloved Babe Ruth, an issue that had some unfortunate racist repercussions. There were also a couple of influential owners — George Steinbrenner and Charlie Finley — who had major impacts on the game, especially in the burgeoning area of free agency.

Greatest Summer is actually a slight revision of Hammerin’ Hank, George Almighty and the Say Hey Kid: The Year That Changed Baseball Forever, which originally came out in 2008. Rosengren also published Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes (2013), The Fight of Their Lives: How Juan Marichal and John Roseboro Turned Baseball’s Ugliest Brawl into a Story of Forgiveness and Redemption (2014), and Classic Baseball: Timeless Tales, Immortal Moments (2022).

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