"I always wanted to write literature," says Roger Kahn from his chair in the shade overlooking a bucolic oasis of sloping lawns, manicured beds, and crystal blue pool water.  Kahn is the author of 17 nonfiction books, including The Boys of Summer (now in its 65th printing), which earned him national fame and celebrity with its publication in 1972.  He has also penned two novels and hundreds of magazine articles in a career that has already spanned a half century.  He has been called the dean of American sportswriters and the best baseball writer in the country, but Roger Kahn didn't set out to write about sports.

Mr. Kahn beams from the back deck of the clapboard house in Stone Ridge he shares with his third wife, Katherine Johnson, a psychiatrist.  "I caught for Joe Black [Major League pitcher from 1952 to 1957] on the street in Harlem.  He's throwing a 95- mile-per-hour red rubber ball at me with no glove.  After a couple of those, well, I bought a glove off a kid on the street for a dollar.  Worst glove I ever had, but better'n nothin' against Joe Black."

Roger Kahn, 77, was born in Brooklyn within earshot of the cheers from Ebbets Field.  His father was an avid Brooklyn Dodgers fan, while his mother was militantly opposed to baseball conversation of any kind.  Young Kahn attended the "WASP" Froebel Academy, where he received a classic education steeped in "Latin, Milton, the Greeks, the Russians."  But out on the athletic fields of that institution, Roger Kahn was known as "Izzy", in reference to his Jewish last name that cloaked the Alsatians and Catholics who peopled his family setting.  Kahn was determined to change the "Izzy" moniker by sheer prowess on Froebel's football field.

"I ran a kickoff in for a touchdown.  It was great!  And this blond kid, Presbyterian, walks around the end zone and says, 'Nice, Iz...There's a lesson.'  Sports and cultural politics are synonymous in Roger Kahn's writing.

He started out as a copy boy for the New York Herald Tribune.  "Copy boys were the lowest form of life."  Working shifts from 4PM to midnight or 8PM to 4AM found young Roger loitering around the sports center.  "Hey, Copy," famed sports editor Stanley Woodward asked him one day, "What if I told you the pennant race was an indubious battle?  What would you say?"  Woodward had a penchant for literary writers and classic references.

Kahn's Froebel Academy education put him in good stead.  "'Indubious battle' was a term used by Steinbeck, who took it from Paradise Lost, wherein Milton describes a battle upon the plains of heaven."  The adult Kahn's eyes twinkle at the memory.

"Woodward told me, 'Stick around, kid.  Something may come up.'" And something did.  That something was baseball.