By Joe Flaherty The Village Voice April 11, 1968 In times of national tragedy the barometer of the mood of the people can best be researched in saloons and cathedrals. Being more comfortable in the former, Friday afternoon I stopped into a pub in the Wall Street area....
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter December 26, 2013 Our pal Peter Richmond’s new book is out: Phil Jackson: Lord of the Rings. I recently had the chance to catch up with him and chat about Phil Jackson and the craft of writing a biography. Dig in to this holiday Banter...
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 Pete Dexter Inside Sports May 1981 The face suggests more than 21 fights, but that’s how many there have been. Counting the two as an amateur. There is a scar over the left eye, a missing tooth. The nose is flat and soft, without cartilage. Apart from that, it’s a...
By Pat Jordan GQ October 1989 Tom Selleck is faced with a dilemma. He is being forced to make a decision that will annoy at least one of three people. “Well, I don’t know, Esme. What do you think?” His publicist, Esme Chandlee, who is seated beside Selleck on a sofa...
By Alex Belth The Classical February 2014 They came to Ted Williams the way those eight ill-fated adventurers came to Everest, thinking they could scale it, conquer it, reduce it to something mortals could comprehend. John Updike almost made it to the top when he...
By Alex Belth Bronx Banter February 23, 2012 The Knicks are in Miami tonight to play the Heat. What better time to hear from Scott Raab, the Esquire writer and author of The Whore of Akron: One Man’s Search for the Soul of LeBron James. The Whore of Akron is a funny,...
By Jack Murphy The New Yorker 1961 Archibald Lee Moore, the light-heavyweight boxing champion of the world, is 44 years of age by his own account and 47 by his mother’s. She says that he was born on December 13, 1913, in Benoit, Mississippi, but he insists that the...
By Robert Ward Rolling Stone September 3, 1981 Ransom Stoddard, attorney at law, is doing his best to cover up, but the hell-forged maniac above him just keeps grunting and drooling and lashing him with a bullwhip. Stoddard is backed up as far as he can get against a...
By Donald Hall Sport December 1986 Last year the City of Boston erected a statue of Red Auerbach in the Faneuil Hall Marketplace near the effigy of James Michael Curley, another shrewd benefactor of Boston who once was reelected mayor while serving a term in jail. In...
By John Ed Bradley GQ June 1991 Tipitina’s in the warm blue fog, squatting beneath a crescent moon so sharp and clean you could shave a wild hog with it. Art Neville enters the famous New Orleans honky-tonk wearing a hipster’s suit and studded leather boots, his wife,...
By Davis Miller The Louisville Courier-Journal 1989 I’d been waiting for years. When it finally happened, it wasn’t what I’d expected. But he’s been fooling many of us for most of our lives. For six months, several of his friends had been trying to connect me with him...
