Praying for Gil Hodges

A Memoir of the 1955 World Series and One Family's Love of the Brooklyn Dodgers

Thomas Oliphant

St. Martin's Griffin/Thomas Dunne Books

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“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

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Chapter One 
A Bridge in Indiana
 
It happened right out of the blue.
 
I had started early on my way through rural, southern Indiana to spend some time in the university town of Bloomington. After maybe thirty uneventful, placid miles on State Highway 57, I passed a sign announcing the nearby town of Princeton. It set off an indistinct bell in my head, one of those moments when you react to something before your memory tells you why.
 
I had not quite resolved the question when the next sign several miles north answered it for me with jarring finality:
 
The

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About the Author

Thomas Oliphant

Thomas Oliphant has been a journalist, columnist, and commentator in Washington, D.C., for forty years. He has covered everything from the trials of Vietnam and Watergate to the invasion of Iraq, and every presidential campaign since 1968. His work on the tumultuous desegregation of Boston’s public schools helped win the Pulitzer Prize’s Gold Medal for The Boston Globe and he has contributed analysis for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS for a decade.

Thomas Oliphant

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Available Formats and Book Details

Praying for Gil Hodges
A Memoir of the 1955 World Series and One Family's Love of the Brooklyn Dodgers
Thomas Oliphant

Trade Paperback

Trade Paperback
St. Martin's Press
St. Martin's Griffin/Thomas Dunne Books
May 2006
Trade Paperback
ISBN: 9780312317621
ISBN10: 031231762X
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, 304 pages, Includes 16 pages of black-and-white photographs
$17.99
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Hardcover

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Hardcover
St. Martin's Press
Thomas Dunne Books
July 2005
Hardcover
ISBN: 9780312317614
ISBN10: 0312317611
6 1/8 x 9 1/4 inches, 304 pages, Includes 24 b&w photos throughout
$24.95

e-Book Agency

Learn more about this edition
e-Book Agency
St. Martin's Press
Thomas Dunne Books
April 2007
e-Book Agency
ISBN: 9781429907484
ISBN10: 1429907487
304 pages
$9.99
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