By John Schulian The Philadelphia Daily News April 29, 1986 “Bad News Bees, huh?” says an early arrival at Municipal Stadium, eyeing the message on a player’s T-shirt. “The bad news,” the player informs him, “is we’re here.” The catcher travels by skateboard and lives...
By Ed McClanahan From My Vita, If You Will 1998 If you’ve got it all together, what’s that all around it? —Inscribed on my bathroom wall by Ken Kesey, who attributed it Brother Dave Gardner A bright Sunday afternoon in August 1971, just one week after Bill Graham...
By Charles P. Pierce GQ April 1994 The office park is blank and dead. Denver boomed and Denver busted and this is what’s left—a tiny knot of shuttered buildings strung like a browning Christmas wreath around a ruined hillside. Inside, the carpeting is scarred and...
By Harry Stein Esquire July 1977 “I’d rather hit than have sex,” Reggie Jackson offered up to the man from Time who was laboring on a cover story. “God, do I love to hit that little round sum-bitch out of the park and make ’em say, ‘Wow!’” Sports Illustrated’s guy...
By Peter Richmond GQ January 1995 He answers the door in slippers, a polite and questioning half-smile set off by tortoiseshell bifocals perched on the bridge of his nose. He offers toast in the kitchen of his prewar penthouse late on a Sunday morning when the New...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter May 13, 2009 Our old pal Allen Barra sat down with me recently to talk about his new book, Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee. Alex Belth: You make the argument that Yogi was a better catcher than Johnny Bench. How close was Roy Campanella to Yogi...
By Pat Jordan TV Guide 1988 Prologue The movie is Bluegrass, a four-hour, CBS-TV mini-series. The actors are Cheryl Ladd, Brian Kerwin, Anthony Andrews, Mickey Rooney, and Wayne Rodgers. The setting is Lexington, Kentucky, Bluegrass Country, where thoroughbred...
By Scott Raab GQ March 1994 Robeson County Sheriff Hubert Stone knows who killed James Jordan; he knows how, where and why. Sheriff Stone says James Jordan grew tired in the middle of one hot July night and, two hours from home, pulled the $46,000 red Lexus Michael...
By John Schulian MSNBC December 3, 2001 The train to glory left without James Crumley, who seems to have been too busy examining life’s gnarly side to bother catching it. There are no best-sellers for him, no money-bloated deals with Hollywood—just hard-boiled novels...
By George Kimball The Boston Phoenix April 1971 Years ago—only a few years ago, actually, but still years before the miracle year of 1967 and years before it became chic to root for the Red Sox—the centerfield bleachers at Fenway were traditionally the habitat of the...
By Alex Belth SI.com December 22, 2008 It was almost one o’clock in the morning but the scoreboard clock was frozen at 12:21. The last game at Yankee Stadium was over, and nobody was in a rush to leave. Sinatra had finally stopped singing “New York, New York,” and...
By Steve Oney Premiere March 1988 Harrison Ford is walking purposefully along a wooden plank sidewalk in a town somewhere in the Rockies. He moves with a sturdy grace, well-muscled shoulders shifting against the yoke of his denim shirt, hips working like ball bearings...
