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 Alex Belth Introduction from Southwest Passage 2013 When he went off to cover the war in the Pacific in January 1943, John Lardner was twenty-nine years old and, thanks to his weekly column in Newsweek, already a major figure in sportswriting. Nothing at Madison...
By Wilfred Santiago From 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente 2001 Before Game 7 of the 1971 World Series, Roberto Clemente told Roger Angell, “I want everybody in the world to know that this is the way I play all the time. All season, every season. I gave everything I...
By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader Ray Robinson died last November at the age of 96. He was born and raised in New York, spent pretty much his whole life here and he died here. Ray wrote about sports and worked as an editor for magazines like Pageant, Good Housekeeping...
By Peter Richmond Bronx Banter April 5, 2013 Unlike many of my social-media colleagues who were lucky enough to meet Roger Ebert, I never did. I only knew him a while back as a guy on a TV show, with another guy in the other chair, presuming to tell me whether a movie...
By Carlo Rotella From Playing in Time 2012 I was in a city far from home, working on a magazine story. I spent the day and evening going around asking questions, watching people do what they do, filling up a couple of pocket notebooks. Among other places, I visited...
By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader Welcome to The Stacks Reader, an online trove of classic journalism and writing about the arts and culture that began innocently enough fifteen years ago in the microfilm room of the New York Public Library. I was there doing some...
By John Schulian Bronx Banter April 19, 2012 As soon as they heard Levon Helm was coming, the guys in the band began to imagine him sitting in with them, playing the drums, maybe even singing “The Weight.” It was one of the songs they did when they got together on...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter September 22, 2012 The greatest stretch in New York sports came in 1969–In 70. It started when the upstart Jets won the Super Bowl, continued that fall when the previously hapless Mets won the World Series, and was capped off the following...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter May 23, 2003 The Fan Who Wasn’t There I worked for Joel and Ethan Coen for roughly one year, between the late summer of 1996 through the fall of 1997. I had been working as an apprentice film editor when I went to work for the guys, first as...
By Steve Oney Playboy December 2011 On a hot summer afternoon, Herschel Walker, wearing a Best Damn Sports Show T-shirt and Clinch board shorts, strides into the 2,500-square-foot main room of the American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, Calif. At 6-foot-1 and 219...
By Richard Ben Cramer Bronx Banter October 22, 2010 My grandfather took me to my first game at The Stadium. Not baseball: the Cleveland Browns against the New York Football Giants. I lived in Rochester and, as a consequence, I was a Browns fan. As to whether this was...
