Roger Kahn, the writer who wove memoir and baseball and touched millions of readers through his romantic account of the Brooklyn Dodgers in “The Boys of Summer,” has died. He was 92.

He died Thursday at a nursing facility in Mamaroneck, New York, son Gordon Kahn said.

“Roger Kahn loved the game and earned a place in the pantheon of baseball literature long ago. He will be missed, but his words will live on,” Major League Baseball said in a statement.

The author of 20 books and hundreds of articles, Kahn was best known for the 1972 best-seller that looked at his relationship with his father through their shared love of the Dodgers, an object of nostalgia for the many fans who mourned the team’s move to Los Angeles after the 1957 season.

“At a point in life when one is through with boyhood, but has not yet discovered how to be a man, it was my fortune to travel with the most marvelously appealing of teams,” Kahn wrote.

“The Boys of Summer” was a story of lost youth, right down to its title, later borrowed for a hit Don Henley song about a man longing for his past.

Advertisement

TENNIS

FEDERER-NADAL: Roger Federer wasn’t going to lose this one to Rafael Nadal. Not on what felt like a homecoming for Federer, who beat his great rival 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 in a three-set exhibition match at a soccer stadium in Cape Town, South Africa, on Friday.

It was Federer’s first match in his mother’s country of birth, and the country the Swiss great rates as his second home.

Almost everything was for Federer on the night. The caps and T-shirts with RF logos all across the crowd. The “Welcome home, Roger” signs being held up. The coin for the toss, a newly minted 20 Swiss Francs with Federer’s image on it. Federer recently became the first living Swiss to be engraved on one of the nation’s coins.

A sellout crowd of 51,954 came to the Cape Town Stadium – built for the 2010 soccer World Cup – to watch Federer and Nadal turn it on. That’s the biggest crowd ever on record for a tennis match. Organizers said the demand for tickets was in the region of 200,000 requests.

SOCCER

Advertisement

MLS: A long-running lawsuit looking to force promotion and relegation on to Major League Soccer has failed.

Lower-tier clubs Miami and Kingston Stockade filed a challenge in 2017 with the Court of Arbitration for Sport against FIFA, North American soccer body CONCACAF and the U.S. Soccer Federation.

Miami owner Riccardo Silva, the former head of media rights agency MP & Silva, sought to disrupt the closed MLS system of new clubs paying franchise fees up to $200 million.

The clubs’ case cited a sub-section of FIFA statutes stating “a club’s entitlement to take part in a domestic league championship shall depend principally on sporting merit.” The FIFA article also notes participation “may be subject to other criteria.”

CAS ruled this week that FIFA never intended the promotion-relegation principle to apply to the U.S. and Australia.

The ruling, seen Friday by The Associated Press, said that although FIFA may not like closed leagues they can be allowed if a domestic professional championship never had promotion and relegation between divisions.

Advertisement

• The league’s New York City team and the Yankees have revived plans for a 25,000-seat soccer stadium near the baseball park in the Bronx, seven years after a proposal fell through.

New York City’s Economic Development Corp. said Friday it is attempting to put together a deal that would include a soccer stadium built on the site of current parking lots along what was the first-base side of old Yankee Stadium. The old ballpark was torn down in 2009 and replaced by parkland to make up for park space used for the new Yankee Stadium, just to the north.

The project would include land currently occupied by a factory and a ramp to the Major Deegan Expressway.

OLYMPIC QUALIFIER: The Chinese women’s soccer team put a difficult two weeks behind them by beating Thailand 6-1 on Friday in Sydney, Australia, in an Asian qualifying match for the Tokyo Olympics.

The Chinese side had only arrived in Sydney on Thursday after being quarantined in their Brisbane hotel for almost two weeks due to the coronavirus outbreak in their homeland. The disease prompted officials to hastily reschedule all six pool games, which included matches against Australia and Taiwan.

Four Chinese players were also forced to remain at home, including their 2018 Asian Football Confederation player of the year, Wang Shuang.

Advertisement

FOOTBALL

NFL: Six-time Pro Bowl safety Eric Weddle announced his retirement after 13 seasons, his final one with the Rams. Weddle, 35, played nine seasons for the Chargers, three for the Ravens and one for the Rams. He intercepted 30 passes, including one in the playoffs, and scored four touchdowns.

• New Browns Coach Kevin Stefanski has hired former 49ers secondary coach Joe Woods as his defensive coordinator. The move has been rumored for weeks, but Cleveland couldn’t formally interview him until San Francisco’s season ended. Woods and Stefasnki worked together for eight seasons in Minnesota.

– News service report

Comments are not available on this story.