Roger Kahn’s wonderful book, The Boys of Summer, always comes to mind when winter yields to spring and the crack of bat on ball enlivens the senses.

Kahn’s story is about the young men who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s and then later went their separate ways after their summer had turned to autumn.  I’ve read the book twice, once in my 20s, when my own centerfield dreams had long since dimmed, and then again a few years later, when I was older and perhaps, although some would argue the point, a tad bit wiser.

Kahn’s book is ostensibly about baseball, and I would venture that few without at least a passing interest in the game have read it.

And that’s too bad, because it has more to say about growing up and growing old than it does about hits and home runs and strikeouts.

In Kahn’s own eloquent words: “Baseball skill relates inversely to age.  The older a man gets, the better a ballplayer he was when young, according to the watery eyes of memory.”

It was only upon my second reading that I learned the title of the book came from a Dylan Thomas poem, I See The Boys Of Summer (I see the boys of summer in their ruin/Lay the gold tithings barren), and how hard Kahn fought against his publisher to retain that title.

It’s another season, the boys of summer are back at it, and the green grass is calling.