By Dennis D’Agostino From Keepers of the Game 2013 In the tradition of Jerome Holtzman’s No Cheering in the Press Box, enjoy this excerpt from Keepers of the Game: When the Baseball Beat Was The Best Job On The Paper concerning the exploits of battlin’ Dick Young:...
By Leonard Shecter Look November 18, 1969 The day in 1966 when AI Davis, who now runs the Oakland Raiders with a small, iron fist, was appointed commissioner of the American Football League, he leaned over the shoulder of the young publicist who was typing the...
By Leonard Shecter Esquire January 1968 One of the favorite things of Vince Lombardi, coach, general manager and spiritual leader of the world-champion Green Bay Packers, is the grass drill. He lets an assistant coach lead the bending and stretching exercises, the...
By John Lardner True February 1956 The hotel manager and the detective stood looking down at the man on the bed, who had killed himself during the night. “Norman Selby, it says on the note, and Selby was how he checked in,” the manager said. “Wasn’t that his right...
By Paul Hemphill Sport 1975 Ahoskie, North Carolina There is something in the old baseball scout reminding us of grandfatherly chats, squeaky slippers, soft wine, and a knowledge gained only through experience. They have been there in rickety, skeletal bleachers in...
By W. C. Heinz The Saturday Evening Post January 10, 1959 In five hours Gordie Howe would play hockey with the Detroit Red Wings against the New York Rangers. Now it was 3:30 in the afternoon, and he was sitting at the kitchen table in his new home in a residential...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter August 14, 2014 Today marks the publication of the Library of America’s latest sports anthology—-Football: Great Writing about the National Sport. It’s edited by our old chum John Schulian. Alex Belth: When you read boxing or baseball...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter April 30, 2012 Robert Ward is a novelist, journalist, and screenwriter. He recently published Renegades, a collection of his magazine work from the 1970s and was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule for a chat. Alex...
By Dan Jenkins Golf Digest April 1985 Something mythical happens to every writer who goes to The Maters for the first time, some sort of emotional experience that results in a search party having to be sent out to recover his typewriter from a clump of azaleas. The...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter June 20, 2011 The Cardboard God of Hellfire, our man Josh Wilker, has a new book out. I recently had a chance to ask him a few questions about it. Alex Belth: How did this project come about? Josh Wilker: I guess the series editor, Sean...
By Mark Kram Esquire March 1989 There is the feel of a cold offshore mist to the hospital room, a life-is-a-bitch feel, made sharp by the hostile ganglia of medical technology, plasma bags dripping, vile tubing snaking in and out of the body, blinking monitors...
By Mark Kram Esquire June 1988 Odd, he was thinking, how a streak leans on you, twists you, turns you, can overwhelm the most finely tuned psychology designed to protect you from its vast intrusions. He was stretched out on a bed in a dark Madrid hotel room, listening...
