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 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 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 Larry Merchant From Ringside Seat at the Circus 1976 Paul Simon, the Simon of Simon and Garfunkel, was invited to Yankee Stadium yesterday to throw out the first ball, to see a ballgame, to revisit his childhood fantasy land, to show the youth of America that...
By Joe Flaherty The Village Voice August 26, 1972 When Willie Mays returned to New York, many saw it—may God forgive them—as a trade to be debated on the merits of statistics. Could the forty-one-year-old center fielder with ascending temperament and waning batting...
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...
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...
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 W.C. Heinz True March 1958 “Down in Los Angeles,” says Garry Schumacher, who was a New York baseball writer for thirty years and is now assistant to Horace Stoneham, president of the San Francisco Giants, “they think Duke Snider is the best center fielder the...
By Joe Flaherty Esquire October 1974 Across the isle of Manhattan these days floats a torch song for the past. The wail seems to be strained through a muted horn or, better yet, siphoned through a derby. What occasions this is the belief that the Apple has turned...
By Diane K. Shah New York Magazine April 21, 1980 I’m in a taxi, trying to get to Yankee Stadium. I’m late and I’ve got my uniform on. But when I get there the guard won’t let me in. He doesn’t recognize me. So I find this hole in the fence and I’m trying to crawl...
