Fighting and Drinking With the Rats at Yankee Stadium

By George Kimball From Lasting Yankee Stadium Memories 2010 There are things you learned about the old Yankee Stadium once it became your place of work that never would have occurred to you as a kid going to watch a game there. Making your way from the visiting to the...

The Stacks Chat: Jane Leavy

By Alex Belth Bronx Banter August 20, 2003 Jane Leavy, author of last year’s smash hit, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, is on a roll. Not only is Koufax due out in paperback this September, but Perennial (a division of HarperCollins) has issued a paperback edition of...

The Stacks Chat: Arnold Hano

By Hank Waddles Bronx Banter September 25, 2009 You probably don’t know Arnold Hano. How could you? You live in a world of bullet points and exclamation points, a place where sportswriters aspire either to the pomposity of ESPN’s “Sports Reporters” or to the cacophony...

Thin Mountain Air

By Pat Jordan Philadelphia Magazine April 1994 Durango, Colorado, is a cold mountain community 6,506 feet above sea level. It is known for its thin air, which can make residents light-headed, disoriented. It is surrounded by the La Platta mountain range. Built into...

Listening to the Sox on the Radio

By Nicholas Dawidoff From The Crowd Sounds Happy 2008 I acquired a clock radio of my own. It was a Realistic Chronomatic 9 model, low-built and squared-off at the corners like a shoe box, with a faux-oak plastic cabinet, chrome and clear-plastic control dials, and...

Gracious Man With Dealer’s Hands

By Murray Kempton The New York Post October 9, 1956 There was the customary talk about the shadows of the years and the ravages of the law of averages when Sal Maglie went out to meet the Yankees yesterday afternoon. It was the first time, after all the years, that he...

Fallen Angel

By Loren Feldman GQ February 1990 First, he pointed the gun at his own head. “What? In front of your kids?” she said. Then, he pointed it at her head. “You’re not going to do that,” she said. The first shot went through her neck. She tried to run, but he pursued her...

The Legacy of a Busher’s Letters Home

By John Lardner From You Know Me Al 1959 edition The You Know Me Al letters have an unusual history, in terms of reputation. The impact of their original publication, forty-five years ago, was such that their fame has endured to a large extent by word of mouth, like...

Reggie Jackson in No-Man’s Land

By Robert Ward Sport June 1977 Oh, golden, yellow light shimmering on Reggie Jackson’s chest! Yes, that’s he, the latest member of the American League Champion New York Yankees, and he is standing by his locker, bare-chested, million-dollar sweat dripping from his...

My Life in the Locker Room

By Jennifer Briggs The Dallas Observer June 4, 1992 I was 22 years old and the first woman ever to cover sports for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Up until then, my assignments had been small-time: high school games and features on father-daughter doubles teams and...

The Hit King

By Scott Raab GQ July 1997 If you grew up in Cleveland, rooting ten, twenty, thirty years for what was then the most drab and futile team in baseball, you loathed Pete Rose for at least three reasons. You despised him for his skill and for his frenzy to win. You...

The Stacks Chat: Michael Lewis

By Alex Belth Bronx Banter July 28, 2003 The author of Moneyball was in Boston to throw out the first pitch last Friday night. (David Halberstam, eat your heart out.) A week earlier, Michael Lewis was in New York, putting the finishing touches on the press tour for...