By Pete Dexter Esquire September 1983 The old man was hurt at Pearl Harbor and moved to Florida to mend after they processed him out of the service. He’s been there, and in his wheelchair, ever since. Forty-two years. He lives in Miramar now, just across the line in...
By Pete Axthelm Inside Sports September 1980 Yes, I am a pirate, Two hundred years too late. The cannon’s don’t thunder, There’s nothing to plunder… Jimmy Buffett wrote the song, A Pirate Looks at Forty, in honor of a familiar character around the treasure-dreaming...
By W.C. Heinz True March 1958 “Down in Los Angeles,” says Garry Schumacher, who was a New York baseball writer for thirty years and is now assistant to Horace Stoneham, president of the San Francisco Giants, “they think Duke Snider is the best center fielder the...
By Tom Archdeacon The Miami News January 22, 1979 Darrell Smith sat there and listened quietly. What he heard hurt him, but he didn’t speak. He looked down at the floor. He fidgeted and fumbled with a small Instamatic camera he had brought to the game. Six feet away,...
By Joe Flaherty Esquire October 1974 Across the isle of Manhattan these days floats a torch song for the past. The wail seems to be strained through a muted horn or, better yet, siphoned through a derby. What occasions this is the belief that the Apple has turned...
By Richard Ben Cramer The Baltimore Sun October 17, 1977 I admit it. I’m a Yankee fan, always have been. It wasn’t my fault, really…you see, my grandfather… Well, enough apologies. The fact is I’m glad the Yankees are back and if you had any sense, you would be too....
By Pat Jordan Southern Magazine October 1987 “We had to get David out of the Klan. He was seducing all the wives.” —Ku Klux Klan member, July 1986 It was a stroke of genius. The Presidential candidate had been denied a platform to announce his candidacy by two...
By Peter Richmond The National Sports Daily August 30, 1990 The first time I called Bill Murray to see if he wanted to watch some Cubs games he insisted on reading me the Recipe of the Month from the Cubs newsletter, which was Ryne and Cindy Sandberg’s recipe...
By Charles P. Pierce The New York Times Magazine November 15, 1992 A summer storm cell breaks, purplish and powerful, over the North Park Baptist Church on the north side of Orlando. Hard rain drums speedy and loud off the rusted tin portico of the recreation center,...
By David Halberstam Inside Sports April 1980 They are slow this day at the baggage counter at the Seattle airport, and the players—up too early for the flight after a game the night before, anxious to get on with it, to get to the hotel so they can practice and then...
By Rich Cohen From The Record Men 2005 Leonard Chess had just turned forty. He had two children and was living on the South Shore of Chicago. Each new station in his life would be marked by a new house, a new office. It’s one of the places where the Jewish character...
By Elizabeth Kaye Movieline 1990 Jeremy Irons recently observed that people are more interested in actors than they should, perhaps, be. Nonetheless, we are compelled to learn about the gifted people who move us to tears, who make us laugh, who take up residency in...
