America's Favorite Pasttime: Review of Wait Till Next Year

"Wait Till Next Year" by Doris Kearns Goodwin is a biographical story about a New York girl growing up with baseball.

Goodwin is a regular commentator for television and radio (About 1). She once worked for President Johnson in the White House and eventually wrote his memoirs at the President's request (About 1). The President discovered Goodwin after reading an article she wrote on him for the New Republic Magazine (About 1). Three years after Johnson's death, Goodwin published her first book, Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream (About 1).

Goodwin married Richard Goodwin in 1975. "He helped her to gain access to people and papers for her story on the Kennedy family, begun in 1977 and finished ten years later. This book, too, was acclaimed critically, and was made into a television movie" (About 1).

"In 1995, Doris Kearns Goodwin was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her biography of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, No Ordinary Time (About 1). Wait Till Next Year was her next book.

The book is a memoir of Goodwin's childhood. In it, she talks about growing up in New York and learning about baseball. Goodwin's father hooked her on the Brooklyn Dodgers and taught her everything about the game, including how to keep score.

Goodwin tied her family's life and even some major historical events, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the dreaded Polio disease, into the book. She took the reader through her childhood and into her adolescent years all through baseball.

Some of the events in Goodwin's life that she mentioned was her mother's illness, her sister's career as a nurse, and her father's family background. This background consisted of being orphaned as a child and losing his beloved sister early in life.

But the main focus of the book was baseball. Goodwin would talk about what it was like to root for the Dodgers all season, including during Spring Training, and feeling the defeat of losing the championship year after year. As an Atlanta Brave fan, I could easily sympathize with Goodwin. I loved watching my team make it to the World Series year after year but felt the defeat as they continued to lose to the opposing team.

But Goodwin and I finally got to share a victory. Just as I was finally able to celebrate a World Championship with the Braves in 1995, Goodwin was able to celebrate one with the Dodgers in 1955. A forty-year gap separated our victories, but the emotions we felt over them were identical.

Through her love of baseball, Goodwin talked about her childhood and adolescent life. She mentioned what it was like to be interested in boys for the first time, including having her first boyfriend.

Goodwin talked a lot about her best friend Elaine throughout the book. She mentioned how they grew up together, played together every day and enjoyed watching baseball together. Their one difference was that Elaine and her family were Yankee fans. As long as the two teams were not playing together, the best friends would root for one another's teams. But if the Yankees and the Dodgers played together, the two best friends would rival with each other over a victory. But the games would be the only thing they rivaled over.

The part of Goodwin's life that involved baseball changed drastically in 1957 when the Dodgers ended their career in Brooklyn. They moved to Los Angeles at the same time the Giants moved to San Francisco. After this, Goodwin thought her love of baseball changed forever.

At the same time the Dodgers were moving, Goodwin's mother became seriously ill. She ended up in the hospital near death for weeks. But her condition took a turn for the better and she was able to return home under special medical care.

To help her mother through this time, Goodwin began reading to her, bringing back a favorite pastime the two shared when Goodwin was little. The story took a sad turn when Goodwin's mother passed away.

Towards the end of the book, Goodwin talked about becoming an adult. She started college, focused on a career towards writing and slowly began to build a new life away from her childhood home. She moved away from there when she was in high school after her mother died. Her father was too distraught over her mother's death to live in the house they shared. So he moved his family to an apartment away from the neighborhood Goodwin grew up in.

As Goodwin grew into adulthood, she came to realize the move was good for her father. When she left for college, she was comforted in knowing her father had friends around to keep him company. One good friend in particular became Goodwin's stepmother, an event that made her and her father very happy.

At the end of the book, Goodwin talks about meeting a friend at Harvard who introduced her to the Boston Red Sox. This piqued her interest in baseball again and she once again became a devoted fan.

When Goodwin married and had children, she introduced her sons to baseball. They became interested in the game and the Red Sox just as she did as a child when her father introduced her to the Dodgers.

From her early childhood to this move when she was a teenager, Goodwin told her story about what it was like to grow up in a neighborhood where everyone knew each other. From mentioning neighbor's whose houses she ran in and out of, to the downtown area where the shops were and mentioned the people she would interact with there, Goodwin told an amazing story of what life was like in 1950s "Rockville Centre, on the South Side of Long Island, New York" (Goodwin 14).

I enjoyed reading Goodwin's story about growing up with baseball. As a baseball fan, I could follow along with her about what it was like to grow up rooting for the same team year after year and feeling the victories and defeats throughout those years. I also enjoyed the historical references that were mentioned in the book. I'm not much of a history fan, but the events Goodwin mentioned were interesting to read about on a first-hand basis. I enjoyed all of these aspects of the book.