memoir Page 1 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
From The Grave, Dead Fabulist Pat Conroy Gives New Life To Whopper About Getting His Ass Kicked By His Dad<em></em>
Pat Conroy was full of shit....
The Coach I Never Forgot
Sheik Caputo never saw Paris or the Pyramids, but he did make it to New York for the 1956 World Series, and that was as far as he ever wanted to travel. The Series was one of those sustaining events, like outrunning his son when 50 was on the horizon and the kid could fly. It gave him faith even tho...
A Fan's Notes
Over at The Daily Beast, my pal Allen Barra writes about Frederick Exley and his muse, the late Frank Gifford: ...
Almost Famous: The B+ Adventures Of Robert Christgau
Bob Christgau, the semi-mockingly self-styled Dean of American Rock Critics, diets on Mondays and Tuesdays, so on this particular Monday in December, lunch is just a small to-go bowl of chicken noodle soup from the Polish Deli across the street from his East Village apartment. He eats at his clutt...
Thirteen Ways Of Looking At Greg Maddux
A record producer friend once told me that Check Your Head, the Beastie Boys' 3rd album, was perfectly realized. That's stuck with me over the years, the idea of being able to achieve something that lives up to your ambition. In a 1978 Playboy Interview, Bob Dylan said: "The closest I ever got to t...
Charles Portis On Motel Life, Lower Reaches
Here's a beaut from Charles Portis, published in the Oxford American:...
The Lebowskis Who Might Have Been: Behind The Scenes With The Coens
When I was 25 I got a job with the Coen brothers. I'd worked on three movies as an apprentice film editor and got a gig with them as a personal assistant when they made The Big Lebowski. I was with them for a year, from before pre-production through post-production (when they edited the movie, I tra...
Song For My Father
Several years ago, I eagerly read Adam Hochschild's celebrated book about the early days of the Belgian Congo, King Leopold's Ghost. It is an evocative and engaging read. I was stopped on the subway twice, exactly one week apart, by women who saw me reading the book and who were compelled to tell me...
Learning To Pitch
Head on over the SB Nation's Longform site and check out this lovely story by Rachel Toor about dating the late Bob Welch:...
Learning to Surf Without Feeling
Another story that's worth your time. Erik Hedegaard's memoir piece for Outside:...
The Heroes Of My Youth
More baseball because this is a time for spring and baseball on the brain. Check this out, from one of my favorite writers, a memoir piece by Paul Hemphill about growing up watching the Birmingham Barons:...
A Boy Grew in Brooklyn
So goes the title of this memoir piece that Arthur Miller wrote for Holiday back in March of 1955:...
Ben Hogan Isn't Walking Out Of That Sand Trap
And speaking of Dan Jenkins, our pal Bryan Curtis recently profiled him for Grantland. It's worth your time:...
Kazan: An Appreciation
A few years ago there was a nice appreciation of Elia Kazan by John Lahr over at The New Yorker:...
Let's Go To The Movies
I thought of the old New Yorker theater the other day because it is where my brother and I saw Tron. Our old man dropped us off outside the theater and we asked some grown ups to get us in. Later, I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show there. This was well past the theater's prime, but I am fortunate e...
Finishing The Hat
My father didn't own any rock records. He had original cast recordings of Broadway shows. That was his thing, that's what we heard around the house. My twin sister Sam really took to musicals. I liked some but never caught the bug. Eventually, they drove me nuts. ...
This Old Man
Nice piece by Roger Angell in the latest issue of the New Yorker:...
Sports Talk Radio: Art Rust Jr.
When I was a kid in the early 1980s, before WFAN, I listened to Art Rust Jr. talk sports on WABC radio. One day, must have been in 1981 or '82, I was home sick and I got to stay in my parents bed that afternoon. Nobody else was home. I listened to Art and was desperate to ask him a question, the mos...