By John Schulian The Stacks Reader June 18, 2024 The news out of San Francisco says Willie Mays is dead at 93, as if death can contain a virtuoso of his grass-stained, sweat-soaked magnitude. Death is a past-tense proposition and everything Mays did on a baseball...
By Ring Lardner The American Magazine August 1915 What kind of a pitcher was he? Where do you get that “was” stuff? When he’s through it’ll be time enough to talk about him like he was a dead corpse. Oh, yes, I’ve heard all that junk they been pullin’, but wait till...
By Ray Robinson The New York Times July 6, 2008 In the Great Depression 1930s, I lived across the street from South Field, which was a breeding ground for Lou Gehrig’s home runs at Columbia University. In those days, many of the youngsters in the neighborhood...
By Alex Belth SI.com September 23, 2015 Yogi. It’s hard not to smile when you hear his name. You might think of his goofy mug, with the crooked smile that looked as if it had been ripped from the funny pages. Then there’s the oddly-shaped wrestler’s body—squat torso,...
By John Schulian The Stacks Reader August 4, 2020 By its name alone, the Baseball Reliquary was unique, for who besides those taught by knuckle-rapping nuns knew what a reliquary was? (Answer: a receptacle for storing religious artifacts.) Right there you have your...
By Bruce Buschel GQ June 1988 It is World Series weather in Indianapolis. Thirty-five degrees. Charlie Sheen is dancing around center field, trying to warm up. He is worried about his arm tightening up before the big throw. He worries whenever he can. He worries about...
By Ron Shelton From Cult Baseball Players 1990 It was a groundskeeper in Stockton who first told me about Steve Dalkowski, the fastest pitcher of all time. Dalko once threw the ball through the wooden boards of the right-field fence, he said. The groundskeeper studied...
By Bruce Buschel Atlantic City Magazine April, 1984 You smell hot dogs and beer. You feel the anticipation. Men sport bright caps with fancy insignias. Women wear shiny team jackets two sizes too large. Kids struggle with long leather mitts. They hand over their...
By J. Anthony Lukas Harper’s June 1968 “Ladies and gentlemen, we regret there will be no national anthem tonight,” the public address system announced to 159 ladies and gentlemen and about 9,841 empty seats in Knoxville’s Billy Meyer (pronounced Billa Maahr) Stadium...
By Tom Boswell Playboy August 1996 Greg Maddux, the best pitcher since Sandy Koufax, is warming up in the Atlanta Braves’ bullpen. Danny Bowden, 11, and Matt Korpi, 10, think they’ve gone to someplace better than heaven. They haven’t died. But they do have front-row...
By John Schulian The Stacks Reader 2019 Bill Buckner came to the big leagues as a headstrong kid who could outrun everything except self-doubt and hobbled out of the game under the longest shadow a simple ground ball ever cast. But it was between the poles of his...
By Fred Schruers 7 Days May 31, 1989 Rickey Henderson was staring at second base as if it offended his eye in some way. He was standing in the familiar elbows-back, chin-up pointer stance he assumes anytime his feet are treading base-path dirt, but this was inside the...
