By Nelson George The Village Voice May 8, 1984 March 1983—In the motel’s living room two women in their late thirties, wearing much too much makeup, and clothes too tight covering too much flesh, hovered over a hot plate, concerned that everything would taste right...
By Bob Greene Chicago Sun-Times 1972* Sometimes, late in the night, during those hours when you know there is no reason to stay out and yet something keeps you from heading for home and sleep, you will see him at the end of the bar. Always he will be alone, with his...
By John H. Richardson Premiere October 1989 Joel and Ethan Coen’s new movie, Miller’s Crossing, opens with an oddly poignant shot of a hat blowing through an autumn forest. A little later, Tom, the hero, tells Verna, his mistress, that he dreamed he was walking in the...
By Leigh Montville From Evel: The High-Flying Life of Evel Knievel: American Showman, Daredevil, and Legend 2011 Part One Whoosh The man of the moment made the moment a family affair. If this was going to be his last day on earth, then he would go out looking like a...
By David Maraniss From Run to Daylight! Foreword to the 2014 edition For two summers while I was researching the biography When Pride Still Mattered, I lived in New York. Day after day I would venture out to Sheepshead Bay, where Vince Lombardi was born and reared; or...
By Vince Lombardi with W.C. Heinz From Run to Daylight! 1964 3:15 A.M. I have been asleep for three hours and, suddenly, I am awake. I am wide awake, and that’s the trouble with this game. Just twelve hours ago I walked off that field, and we had beaten the Bears...
By John Ed Bradley Esquire December 1985 Out one night last summer in Williamsburg, Virginia—a night that started warm and breezy but quickly turned as hot and rank as old meat—D’Fellas quit talking about local trim for a minute and somebody started on God. Eric...
By Steve Oney Esquire September 1985 Under the cover of the lengthening shadows of a sleepy August afternoon in 1915, five Model T’s loaded with armed men quietly departed the northwest Atlanta suburb of Marietta. The men had told their wives they were going fishing....
By Scott Raab GQ July 1997 If you grew up in Cleveland, rooting ten, twenty, thirty years for what was then the most drab and futile team in baseball, you loathed Pete Rose for at least three reasons. You despised him for his skill and for his frenzy to win. You...
By David Freeman Esquire April 1982 From December 1978 to May 1979, Alfred Hitchcock and I collaborated on a script. I was the last screenwriter to work with him before his death. The time we spent together was always decorous, frequently pleasant, occasionally tense....
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter July 28, 2003 The author of Moneyball was in Boston to throw out the first pitch last Friday night. (David Halberstam, eat your heart out.) A week earlier, Michael Lewis was in New York, putting the finishing touches on the press tour for...
By Joe Flaherty The Village Voice October 27, 1966 They all stood there waiting for the helicopter to come down. You had the feeling some of them wouldn’t have minded if it didn’t make it on its own power. Up in the sky was the mayor of New York, John V. Lindsay. He...