By Peter Richmond GQ October 1992 Nighttime in Los Angeles, on a quiet street off Melrose Avenue. An otherwise normal evening is marked by an oddly whimsical celestial disturbance: Baseballs are falling out of the sky. They are coming from the roof of a gray apartment...
By John Lardner From The Aspirin Age 1949 In May 1927, a slim, comely man of twenty-five years flew an airplane from New York to Paris all by himself, without stopping. His performance was instantly recognized as the climactic stunt of a time of marvelous stunts, of...
By George Plimpton From Paper Lion 1966 Jack Benny used to say that when he stood on the stage in white tie and tails for his violin concerts and raised his bow to begin his routine—scraping through “Love in Bloom”—he felt like a great violinist. He reasoned that, if...
By John Schulian Deadspin August 1, 2014 Dizzy Dean was baseball’s one-man free speech movement. There were big names with untamed mouths before him, of course, Babe Ruth being the obvious example, but the Babe was only too happy to take time out for the occasional...
By Lawrence Wright New Times June 12, 1978 … The sun was a golden globe, half-hidden, and as we drove along it appeared to be some giant golden elephant running along the horizon and I felt so good I remembered something Johnny Sain used to talk about. He used to say...
By Joe Flaherty The Village Voice April 11, 1968 In times of national tragedy the barometer of the mood of the people can best be researched in saloons and cathedrals. Being more comfortable in the former, Friday afternoon I stopped into a pub in the Wall Street area....
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter December 26, 2013 Our pal Peter Richmond’s new book is out: Phil Jackson: Lord of the Rings. I recently had the chance to catch up with him and chat about Phil Jackson and the craft of writing a biography. Dig in to this holiday Banter...
By Larry Merchant From Ringside Seat at the Circus 1976 Paul Simon, the Simon of Simon and Garfunkel, was invited to Yankee Stadium yesterday to throw out the first ball, to see a ballgame, to revisit his childhood fantasy land, to show the youth of America that...
By Pete Dexter Inside Sports May 1981 The face suggests more than 21 fights, but that’s how many there have been. Counting the two as an amateur. There is a scar over the left eye, a missing tooth. The nose is flat and soft, without cartilage. Apart from that, it’s a...
By Pat Jordan GQ October 1989 Tom Selleck is faced with a dilemma. He is being forced to make a decision that will annoy at least one of three people. “Well, I don’t know, Esme. What do you think?” His publicist, Esme Chandlee, who is seated beside Selleck on a sofa...
By Alex Belth The Classical February 2014 They came to Ted Williams the way those eight ill-fated adventurers came to Everest, thinking they could scale it, conquer it, reduce it to something mortals could comprehend. John Updike almost made it to the top when he...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter February 23, 2012 The Knicks are in Miami tonight to play the Heat. What better time to hear from Scott Raab, the Esquire writer and author of The Whore of Akron: One Man’s Search for the Soul of LeBron James. The Whore of Akron is a funny,...
