To Absent Friends

by Red Smith

Sports meant a great many things to Red Smith, but most of all it meant human beings. On these pages he captured many great sports figures of the past, capturing them in their moments of glory, strength, and weaknesses - by use of his past sports column as a framework for enduring artistry. These 182 final tributes tell as much about Red Smith's values as about his subjects, and they are enjoyable to read, providing us a sense and flavor of some of the past greats of sports.

Genres: Sports, Biography Memoir

478 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1982

About the author

Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith (September 25, 1905 – January 15, 1982) was an American sportswriter. Smith’s journalistic career spans over five decades and his work influenced an entire generation of writers. Smith became the second sports columnist ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1976. Writing in 1989, sportswriter David Halberstam called Smith "the greatest sportswriter of the two eras."

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Journalists who want to be better observers, reporters and writers should read this -- no matter whether you're into sports or whether you don't even understand sports. Smith's ability to capture the personalities, stories and significance of the people he writes is an example that everyone can learn from.

Plus, it's a collection of columns, so you don't have to read it straight through; you can skip around to what looks interesting.

[Andrew McMillen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the strangest books I have read, as it comprises nearly two hundred tributes to dead men I have never heard of. Almost all of the deceased were professional athletes in the fields of baseball and American football, though boxers, jockeys, coaches, agents, racehorses and sports journalists all figure heavily, too. Red Smith is considered by some to be the greatest sportswriter of all time. He won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1976. His newspaper columns were published for over 50 years consecutively, most notably for the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Times, and it's these two titles for which many of the tributes in 'To Absent Friends' were first written.

I had never heard of Red Smith until this book was strongly recommended me to a writer I admire, and I'm glad that I was urged in its direction, as Smith's writing is crisply descriptive, often funny, and always emotionally true. He writes sentences like this: "Lefty Grove, who threw bullets past Ruth and Gehrig and the rest, stood six-foot-three and wore an expression of sulky anger stuck on top of a long, thin neck." Some of his best writing here is in tribute to his deceased colleagues, such as this: "To say Damon Runyon's death is a loss to his craft would be like saying breathing under water is inconvenient [...] Runyon could do things with the alphabet that made a fellow want to throw his typewriter away and go dig coal for a living."

His turns of phrase frequently struck me as distinctly American in their delivery, and while I have never been a fan of either baseball or American football – my closest exposure to both probably being through the comedic lens of early episodes of The Simpsons – after reading this book I feel closer to both of these sports than ever before, which I think Smith would take as a compliment. It is introduced by an excellent foreword by a former colleague on the Times, Dave Anderson, and closed by a lovely note from Red's son Terence Smith, as the book was published in 1982, shortly after Red's death. As the author wrote when eulogising a friend: "Dying is no big deal, the least of us will manage that. Living is the trick." This is a wonderful book that I recommend to anyone who writes for a living, as it provides fine study of the craft.

[Ken Tingley · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a young sportswriter, I read this Red Smith anthology religiously trying to discover the magic. It was about the word choice and the turn of phrase that is not something that comes easily. I feel incredibly satisfied to put together my own column anthology - The Last American Editor - at the end of my newspaper career.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the minds of many, Red Smith was the greatest sportswriter of all-time, the guy Mike Lupica has admittedly tried to be. This book is a collection of his, well for lack of a better word, obituaries, a bunch of stories about Smith remembering the best of famous people and athletes after they have thrown off this mortal coil.

Unlike most sports writing, which is transient and seems so banal as the years flow by, Smith writing holds up even 50 years later because the man could write a sentence.

This book is worth a read if you what to read what good sports writing aspires to be and if you want a sense of who mattered in sports from about 1900 to 1980.

[James of the Redwoods · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book for a college writing class. I was immediately blown away by Red's storytelling. I was never a fan of sport subjects - until this book. Wonderful then and gets better every time I read it again.

[Martin Bihl · Rating 3 out of 5]

the old red head was a good writer, but this suffers from a bit too much of the same thing over and over again - in short, too many dead people.