t’s winter for the last of the Boys of Summer, Carl Erskine. Now 95, the former Dodger pitcher lives in his hometown of Anderson, Indiana, with his wife Betty, who’ll soon be 94. They will celebrate their 75th wedding anniversary on October 5 of this year. It’s been a full life for him, one filled with both joys and challenges.
He and his teammates from that great era of Brooklyn baseball – Robinson, Snyder, Campanella, Hodges, Newcombe, Reese, etc. – were immortalized in Roger Kahn’s book, The Boys of Summer, the title taken from a Dylan Thomas poem that features the line, “I see the boys of summer in their ruin.” Fifty years after the book’s publication, Erskine is the last one still alive (outliving even the author) and he has transcended the portrait Kahn drew of him when the book appeared in 1972.
Erskine’s fourth child, Jimmy, was born with Down’s Syndrome.
In the Boys of Summer chapter called “Carl and Jimmy,” Kahn quoted Erskine’s teammate Ralph Branca, who told the writer: “’A lot of people thought he ought to be put in an institution,’ Branca said, his dachshund face more sorrowful than usual. ‘But Carl and Betty wanted to bring (Jimmy) up themselves.’”
