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Praying for Gil Hodges: A Memoir of the 1955 World Series and One Family's Love of the Brooklyn Dodgers
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.357640974723
EAN: 9780312317621
ISBN: 031231762X
Label: St. Martin's Griffin
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Griffin
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: May 30, 2006
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Release Date: May 30, 2006
Studio: St. Martin's Griffin
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Editorial Review:
“Tom Oliphant has created a small masterpiece.”
--Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of the bestselling Wait Till Next Year
Praying for Gil Hodges is built around a detailed reconstruction of the seventh game of the 1955 World Series, when the Brooklyn Dodgers won the world championship of baseball.
Thomas Oliphant creates a relentless melodrama that shows this final game in its true glory. As we move through the game, he builds a remarkable history of the Dodgers’ status as a national team, based on their fabled history of near-triumphs and disasters that made them classic underdogs.
He weaves into this brilliant recounting a winning memoir of his own family’s story and their time together on that fateful Game Seven day, thrilling a nine-year-old boy in a loving, struggling family for whom the Dodgers were a rare source of the joys and symbols that bring families together through tough times.
Written with power and clarity, this is a brilliant work that captures the majesty of baseball, the issue of race in America, and the love that one young boy, his parents, and the borough of Brooklyn had for their team. “In Praying for Gil Hodges, Tom Oliphant has created a small masterpiece---a splendid recreation of life in the 1950s, a poignant tribute to his parents, and a fabulous story about the central role the Brooklyn Dodgers played in the lives of his and countless other families. Moving effortlessly from an adult’s perspective to a child’s recollection, shifting seamlessly between the present and the past, he captures the reader’s interest at every step along the way. I found myself happily transported back in time, following a warm-hearted young boy as he comes of age in a memorable era.”
---Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of the bestselling Wait Till Next Year
“Tom Oliphant is one of our most lyrical writers and he has written a love story---about his parents, about baseball, and most of all about the American values that shaped their lives.”
---Bob Schieffer, Face the Nation
“The story builds to a beautiful and moving resolution, proving that the true center of this book is not the seventh game of the World Series. The heart of the story is the love of a family for a place, a baseball team, but mostly for each other.”
---The Boston Globe
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A Kid in Brooklyn relives a lost time
Thomas Oliphant's memoir of the 1955 World Series is a good story. It recalls Oliphant's childhood just as in the manner of Doris Kearns Goodwin with the following of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Oliphant does a great job of describing life in Brooklyn in mid 20th century Brooklyn. It was a home spun tale of an underdog that finally achieved the ultimate reward of a World Series Triumph. It truly was a communal experience.
Finally the forces of good prevail over the dark forces from ... Read More
Rating:  - A Bridge In Indiana, A Bridge In New York, A Bridge To A Time Long Gone
Thomas Oliphant may be a Hoosier by descent and may have been born on the west side of the East River, but in PRAYING FOR GIL HODGES, he proves that his blood runs True Brooklyn Dodger Blue. Oliphant is a Brooklynite but for an accident of birth.
The editing of this book is a little chaotic, and costs it a star. But the stories it tells are golden. A few reviewers have criticized this book, saying that Oliphant's tale of a childhood in reduced circumstances rings false; however, Oliphant's ... Read More
Rating:  - Pure junk, nothing more than HS term paper with filler
Book is nothing more than the author's self serving tale of his "hard times" growing up and attending upscale social schools and functions in Manhattan (not Brooklyn). Bad editing. Read the other negative reviews for better perspective.
Rating: - Captures Perfectly What It Means to Be a Baseball Fan
Thomas Oliphant's Praying for Gil Hodges is his very personal account of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers and, in particular, of Game 7 of that year's World Series in which the Dodgers finally beat the hated New York Yankees to become baseball world champions. But this book is about much more than baseball; it is about how a child can form a bond with a sports team that will last him a lifetime and how a team can often bring whole families closer together by giving them a common love upon which to focus their ... Read More
Rating:  - Unique Individual Perspective-Worth the Read
This title of Praying for Gil Hodges is very mis-leading. You need to look below that and see it is a menoir of the author and his family of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Imagine today crying if the Yankees or Mets won a World Series it would never happen. For that matter any team which wins a championship today, would you cry? When the Dodogers won in 1955 the author speaks freely of how his father and so many others cried. What sets this book apart from other on the Dodgers is the in depth discussion of Brooklyn ... Read More
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