Jim Brown’s Last Chance

By Paul Solotaroff The National Sports Daily April 1991 In the candlelit quiet of Jim Brown’s living room, the unkillable Tee Rogers stands up and tells the hardboys that he is tired of all the death. Tee Rogers, the granddaddy of L.A. gangsters, whose resume reads,...

Tyrus

By Ring Lardner The American Magazine June 1915 Sit down here a while, kid, and I’ll give you the dope on this guy. You say you didn’t see him do nothin’ wonderful? But you only seen him in one serious. Wait till you been in the league more’n a week or two before you...

Is Everything Okay?

By Charles P. Pierce GQ April 1994 The office park is blank and dead. Denver boomed and Denver busted and this is what’s left—a tiny knot of shuttered buildings strung like a browning Christmas wreath around a ruined hillside. Inside, the carpeting is scarred and...

Meet Reggie (Dr. Jekyll) Jackson (Mr. Hyde)

By Harry Stein Esquire July 1977 “I’d rather hit than have sex,” Reggie Jackson offered up to the man from Time who was laboring on a cover story. “God, do I love to hit that little round sum-bitch out of the park and make ’em say, ‘Wow!’” Sports Illustrated’s guy...

The Eyes of Winter

By Peter Richmond GQ January 1995 He answers the door in slippers, a polite and questioning half-smile set off by tortoiseshell bifocals perched on the bridge of his nose. He offers toast in the kitchen of his prewar penthouse late on a Sunday morning when the New...

The Last At Bat at Yankee Stadium

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...

An Ordinary Man

By Steve Oney Premiere March 1988 Harrison Ford is walking purposefully along a wooden plank sidewalk in a town somewhere in the Rockies. He moves with a sturdy grace, well-muscled shoulders shifting against the yoke of his denim shirt, hips working like ball bearings...

Paper Lion

By Ambrose Clancy GQ November 1987 He goes to work at nine-thirty Saturday morning of the Memorial Day weekend. He leaves the elevator and walks into the lobby of his apartment house. The young doorman says, “Morning, sir.” “Yeah. How you doin’?” The doorman counters...

Walking Tall

By John Marchese Philadelphia November 1991 “So he says—first question—‘Do you believe in sin?’ “Do I believe in sin? I mean, gimme a break.” This is the sound of Pete Dexter dealing with fame. It wasn’t so long ago that Dexter could limp over to 13th and Pine and...

Breaking the Wall

By Pat Jordan TV Guide (original draft) 1989 Studio Executive to Director of Stick: “You’ll have to re-shoot some scenes.”   Director to Executive: “I don’t have to re-shoot any thing. I’m Burt Reynolds.”   Executive to Director: “You used to be Burt...

The Methods and Madness of Hubie Brown

By Steve Oney The Atlanta Journal Constitution Magazine December 9, 1979 From a vantage point high in some structural-steel arena in a city like Philadelphia or New York or, for that matter, Atlanta, Hubie Brown, the coach of the Atlanta Hawks, appears to be a...

The Lindbergh Legends

By John Lardner From The Aspirin Age 1949 In May 1927, a slim, comely man of twenty-five years flew an airplane from New York to Paris all by himself, without stopping. His performance was instantly recognized as the climactic stunt of a time of marvelous stunts, of...