It’s been too long since we’ve heard from Roger Kahn, the socially conscious storyteller who turned boomer nostalgia for the Brooklyn Dodgers into an art form and cottage industry. More than 40 years after publishing THE BOYS OF SUMMER, his paean to Pee Wee, Gil, “Oisk,” Jackie and company, Kahn comes full circle in what he has decided will be his final book. RICKEY & ROBINSON makes for a fitting coda.

We have heard the basis of Kahn’s newest many times before: Branch Rickey, the beetle-browed president of the Dodgers, wanted to bring African-American players into organized baseball, defined then as “whites-only” baseball. After due diligence, he picked Jackie Robinson --- an all-star collegiate athlete, a former military officer and Negro Leaguer, and a man in whom Rickey saw amazing character and fortitude --- to be “the first.”

Needless to say, this did not sit well with a disturbing majority of baseball decision-makers. Rickey came up against tremendous opposition but stuck to his guns, and Robinson’s eventual breaking of the unofficial color line became one of the defining moments of the Civil Rights movement.

"Kahn...is passionate about his quest for even-handedness and is at his best when he discloses the behind-the-scenes decisions made, not at baseball’s executive levels --- those stories have also been told before --- but in the questionable editorial choices of Robinson’s saga by the press."

Kahn includes all this in RICKEY & ROBINSON, but recalling his salad days as a young journalist who covered the Dodgers in the 1950s, his perspective is perhaps a bit sharper than others. He broke through Robinson’s guard and eventually became his friend, collaborating with the ballplayer on a sports magazine marketed towards a black readership that ultimately failed.

This was no surprise given the lack of interest by advertisers that reflected the ennui of the newspaper industry in covering baseball integration in general. He writes about the short leash his editors kept on him when it came to revealing the substandard conditions Robinson and his contemporaries like Roy Campanella, Don Black, Don Newcombe --- teammates all --- and other African American players had to endure: hotels that would not accommodate them, restaurants that would not serve them, and hostile opponents and audiences who hurled insults (and worse) at them.

Kahn, who has written more than a dozen wonderful books on baseball, is passionate about his quest for even-handedness and is at his best when he discloses the behind-the-scenes decisions made, not at baseball’s executive levels --- those stories have also been told before --- but in the questionable editorial choices of Robinson’s saga by the press. It might be hard to conceive now, but in that era, most cities had several newspapers, many of which did not think highly of integration on any level (Kahn points out the almost-total absence of black journalists in mainstream publications). He calls to task the sports desks of The New York Times and New York Daily News, in particular, for their lack of impartiality and laissez-faire attitude.

In a case of everything old being new again, the case of Bruce Levenson, the majority owner of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, eerily mirrors Larry MacPhail’s concerns in the late 1940s. The then-Yankees owner worried that having African Americans players would mean more African Americans fans, which would intimidate the teams’ white (and wealthier) patrons.

For all of Kahn’s insights, there are a few off notes in RICKEY & ROBINSON. Too often, he downplays the role of most of his rival journalists, if not being outright caustic in his opinions of them personally. He also has little faith in the works of previous Robinson/Rickey chroniclers. Of course, Kahn was a witness to history and is entitled to his opinions, but it somehow seems unworthy of such a revered writer. His place in the baseball literary pantheon is secure; he doesn’t need to come down so hard on these men, most of whom have passed on and cannot respond to his assertions.

I would be remiss not to allude to (I don’t want to say it outright) a final revelatory comment about Robinson that I found totally unnecessary, given his stature in American history and Kahn’s constant claim that the two men were friends.