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<\/a><\/p>\nNext up on the essays shelf<\/a>:<\/p>\n The Only Game in Town: Sportswriting from The New Yorker<\/a> \nThe Only Game in Town<\/i> is a collection of sports writing from The New Yorker<\/i>. So far, I have excerpted from the following collections: Life Stories<\/i><\/a> (profiles), The Fun of It<\/i><\/a> (Talk of the Town pieces), and The New Gilded Age<\/i><\/a> (financial writing), and Secret Ingredients<\/i><\/a> (food writing). <\/p>\n Roger Angell may be the most well-known baseball writer in America. But this piece, by John Updike, from 1960, is perhaps the most famous essay on baseball ever written. Certainly beloved by Red Sox fans, for obvious reasons (even people who would never pick up The New Yorker<\/i> can quote the first line verbatim), it is quoted, quoted again, re-quoted, re-quoted again, ad nauseum into eternity. Updike’s description of Fenway Park as “a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark” has entered into the common lexicon of baseball. <\/p>\n David Remnick, in his introduction to this collection, writes:<\/p>\n It is often said that John Updike’s “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” – an account of Ted Williams’ last day on the field – is the best baseball piece ever written (or, at least, once you take Angell out of play). It is also the only one he ever wrote for the magazine. Updike accomplished his ode to Williams in a flash – an aberration for the magazine in those days – and, ever since then, the piece has held a place in the deadline hall of fame.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Fantastic! Ted Williams’ last at-bat at Fenway, after a 21-year career (taking four years out, of course, to fight in both WWII and Korea), was on September 28, 1960. John Updike’s piece ran in the magazine the week of October 22, 1960. That is a hell of a deadline, especially for a piece so in-depth, so well written, as this. You get the sense that Updike had been waiting to write such a piece for years, so when the opportunity came, out it flowed. But still: what an accomplishment. <\/p>\n Ted Williams’ career was, of course, before my time as a Red Sox fan, but that’s irrelevant as any baseball fan will know. In baseball, you live alongside the past accomplishments, the history of the game and your team, and the names are passed down through generations. I may have grown up in the era of Jim Rice and Carlton Fisk and Yaz (the tail-end – I was at his second-to-last at-bat at Fenway<\/a>), but I knew the names of the past. I don’t remember being told the names for the first time. They seep in through osmosis. Bobby Doerr. Poor Tony Conigliaro. Dom DiMaggio. Ted Williams. (And, of course, David Halberstam wrote a whole book<\/a> about that group who were rookies at the same time, called Teammates<\/i>.) Smoky Joe Wood<\/a>. Also, Ted Williams was still alive, so he was around, in footage at Fenway, etc. He was still with us. I thought he was as handsome as a movie star. I knew about his surly relationship with the press, and also with the fans. This anecdote<\/a> was included in one of our Red Sox books at home. I thought about it a lot when I was a kid. I didn’t like that he had thrown the bat. Apparently, he bought her an expensive watch or something as an apology … but I still didn’t like it. I was 10 years old and it had all happened before I was even born but I was disappointed in him. His aura as a phenomenal baseball player was almost otherworldly, and there was a huge disconnect between that and his refusal to “play the game” the way other players did (tipping his hat to the fans, being polite to the press, etc.) Williams was a son of a bitch in many ways. The anecdotes are endless. <\/p>\n Updike goes into all of that in his essay. First off, it is a description of a day at the ballpark. It is an ode to Fenway Park. It is a description of the crowd itself, and the feeling that they all had about Williams. It’s something in the air. There was a big ceremony for Williams pre-game. He made a speech where he referenced the press, and the entire event sort of trembled in the balance. Was he about to turn on the press, yet again, in his final moments? Grumblings of unease through the lyric little bandbox.<\/p>\n And, you couldn’t even script this any better, Ted Williams hit a home run that day, at his last time at the plate. You can sense Updike’s disbelief. Wait … what? <\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n