Love Song to Willie Mays

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...

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...

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...

Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff

By Red Smith The New York Herald Tribune October 4, 1951 Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible...