icon Blueprint for November

Home Runs

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Our staff writer Mark Olshaker and I spent the summer of 1981, the most glorious summer of each of our lives, traveling the country with a film crew and visiting the stars of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers for a documentary based on Roger Kahn’s bestselling book, The Boys of Summer. While Duke Snider was the color commentator at the time for the Montreal Expos, we found most of his former teammates in their 50s or 60s and working in their old hometowns: Pee Wee Reese worked in marketing for Louisville Slugger; Clem Labine managed a clothes manufacturing operation in Woonsocket, Rhode Island; Carl Erskine was a bank vice president in Anderson, Indiana; Roy Campanella, long disabled from a famous car accident, was a consultant for the Dodgers; Preacher Roe ran a family grocery store in Viola, Arkansas; and Carl Furillo, battling cancer at the time, worked as a night watchman at a factory in Reading, Pennsylvania. During their tenure as Dem Bums of Brooklyn, Snider was the highest paid earning about $80,000. Almost all the players had other jobs in the winters between seasons.

In this issue’s cover story, Mark looks at the post-sports careers of some contemporary athletes who had one specific advantage over the Boys of Summer: more money. Much more money. While the sports idols of our youth had to devote the balance of their lives to finding the means to continue to support their own families, the stars of later eras, such as champions Mo Vaughn and Magic Johnson, have been able to utilize their wealth and glory to turn entrepreneurial, and help the less fortunate. And some of them have chosen to do so in affordable housing. (Out of the Ballpark) A forerunner in this area was the most famous and most influential of those ‘50s Dodgers, Jackie Robinson.

Other folks devoted to making a difference in communities throughout America include the winners of this year’s projects under HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods program as well as NH&RA member and staunch supporter, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which is funding a whopping $770 million portfolio of seven affordable housing preservation projects in San Francisco (where BoA began). We kept staff writer Joel Swerdlow on his scooter this month researching both initiatives. (Choice Thoughts from “Choice” Winners)(What Happens in San Francisco…)

A couple of months back we asked attorney John Gahan of Murtha Cullina in Boston to escort readers through the experience of a Year 15 refinancing transaction, and he delivered a scenario that reads like good fiction while loaded with actual hands-on experience and fact. It was so popular with our readership, that we asked him to call on the characters he created once again and march them through a “Bidding War.”

In last month’s issue we presented the beautiful and creative historic rehabilitation projects nominated for NH&RA’s 2015 Timmy Awards. In this issue, on page 14, you will find the winners as selected by a panel of distinguished judges.

The Duke and Pee Wee and Oisk and Campy played in five World Series together between 1949 and 1956, all against the hated Yankees. But they never had to play into the cold of November like this year’s league winners will. So as you watch this year’s fall classic, hopefully beside the fire, we hope you’ll also read and enjoy the variety of entertaining stories in our November issue.

Marty Bell, Editor