Baseball Diaries: Confessions of a Cold War Youth 

It’s 1963 in suburban Minneapolis, when 7-year-old George (later Wayne) Johnson meets Artie, who lets George fly his dog. Thus begins a decade-long, on-and-off friendship and coming-of-age odyssey that will shape both boys’ futures and test their character, loyalty, humor, and wits. This is not, however, the land of June and Ward Cleaver, and we are drawn into a parallel world unimagined by the boys’ mainstream parents and peers, a world sometimes hilarious (the “duel” between Artie’s dog and a casserole), sometimes nostalgic (balsa-wood model planes and Playboy centerfolds), occasionally perilous, and often illegal (setting off a stash of illicit fireworks deep inside the Minneapolis Convention Center). On the surface there is little-league and scouting, romance and school, hobbies and jobs. But hidden from the adult world are the life-endangering stunts, the relentless torment of a pathological bully leading George to develop a series of home-made (and increasingly dangerous) defensive weapons, and the fleeting moral disdain for marijuana which soon gives way to an entrepreneurial and connoisseurial obsession when the plant is found growing in abundance nearby. In turns tender, humorous, hair-raising and heartwarming, Baseball Diaries is a bitter-sweet and fascinating look at a pivotal time in a young man’s life and a magical time in America when baseball seemed simple and pure.