GOODWIN: That's Brooklyn, not Boston

Thank you for the heads-up on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s lecture to the Humanities Banquet on Thursday.

However, I am wondering whether you have even read “Wait Till Next Year.” Only a pure dolt could miss her incredible rendering of her childhood growing up in BROOKLYN, not Boston! Her account of being taught by her father to religiously keep baseball scorebooks but to follow the glories and stumbles of the “Bums from Brooklyn” as they seemingly could never succeed in making the jump from National League Pennant Winner to World Series Champions. Not until 1955 did the Brooklyn Dodgers finally defeat the pinstriped Yankees to win the World Series to Goodwin’s immense joy and satisfaction.

It is true that since moving to Boston and teaching at Harvard, she has enjoyed taking her sons to Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox, but nothing in her memoir approaches the passion she had for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

She describes her joy at personally getting Jackie Robinson’s autograph and following his incredible career until he was untimely traded to the hated New York Giants. Robinson retired, the Giants moved to San Francisco and the traitorous Dodgers followed the money to Los Angeles. (Horror of Horrows!)

While NOT a lifelong baseball fan, I was lucky enough to take a trolley to Shibe Park to see the Dodgers play the Philadelphia Athletics. After touring the Empire State Building our BSA Jamboree scoutmaster allowed us to take the subway from Manhattan to storied Ebbets Field to see Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges and the rest of the 1950 “Bums from Brooklyn.”

Undoubtedly, some would call that the ultimate irresponsibility, but we all stuck together and made the train back to North Dakota. Different time to be sure. I look forward to her lecture on Thursday and commend the Idaho Humanities Council for securing such a fabled speaker.

ROBERT S. WEST, M.D., FACS

Coeur d’Alene