By Alex Belth Bronx Banter November 1, 2013 Rich Cohen’s new book, Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football, is a keeper. I’ve been a fan of Cohen’s writing ever since my pal Steinski hipped me to Tough Jews. A few weeks ago I talked to Rich...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter July 15, 2009 Glenn Stout, a longtime favorite here at Bronx Banter, is most famous around these parts for his historical writing, particularly Yankees Century and Red Sox Century. Stout also serves as the series editor for The Best American...
By Alex Belth Deadspin December 2, 2011 George Kimball hung upside down some seventy feet in the cold Manhattan air, still in need of a cigarette. Well, the doctors had said smoking would kill him, hadn’t they? The previous autumn, they had found an inoperable...
By Alex Belth SB Nation October 25, 2012 The first time I heard Roger Angell speak was on a movie screen. I was working as an intern on Ken Burns’s Baseball documentary, sitting in a dark sound-mixing studio in the Brill Building in midtown Manhattan. During his...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter March 19, 2012 Damn Yankees is a winning new collection of essays about the Bronx Bombers. Edited by Rob Fleder, it features an all-star lineup and is a must, not just for Yankee fans or baseball fans, but anyone who appreciates good...
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 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 Alex Belth Bronx Banter May 13, 2010 Every so often, you run into a kindred spirit, a guy you aren’t envious of, just proud to know. Todd Drew was like that, and so is Josh Wilker (pictured above, on the left with his brother Ian). When I first read Josh’s work at...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter August 28, 2012 Sports on Earth debuted yesterday and featured a Q&A I did with W.K. Stratton, author of a fine new biography of Floyd Patterson. Stratton is the author of four other books, including Dreaming Sam Peckinpah. He also...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter March 21, 2003 I’ve have been working on a proposal to write a biography on Curt Flood for a Young Adult audience. Needless to say, I’m pretty jacked up about it. And who better to talk about Curt Flood than Marvin Miller, now 86, the former...
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 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...
