American Pastimes: The Very Best of Red Smith: A Library of America Special Publication

by Red Smith, Daniel Okrent (Editor)

Spanning nearly fifty years and featuring hard-to-find pieces, this anthology collects the most essential writings on American baseball, boxing, and more, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning sports journalist

Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith was the most widely read sports writer of the last century and the first to win the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. From the 1940s to the 1980s, his nationally syndicated columns for the New York Herald Tribune and later for The New York Times traversed the world of sports with literary panache and wry humor. “I’ve always had the notion,” Smith once said, “that people go to spectator sports to have fun and then they grab the paper to read about it and have fun again.” Now, writer and editor (and inventor of Rotisserie League Baseball) Daniel Okrent presents the best of Smith’s inimitable columns—miniature masterpieces that remain the gold standard in sports writing.

Here are Smith’s indelible profiles of sports luminaries, which show his gift for distilling a career’s essence in a single column. Unforgettable accounts of historic occasions—Bobby Thompson’s Shot Heard ’Round the World, Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series, the first Ali-Frazier fight—are joined by more offbeat stories that display Smith’s unmistakable wit, intelligence, and breadth of feeling. Here, too, are more personal glimpses into Smith’s life and work, revealed in stories about his lifelong passion for fishing and in “My Press-Box Memoirs,” a 1975 reminiscence for Esquire collected here for the first time.

Genres: Sports, Baseball, Nonfiction, Essays

560 pages, Hardcover

First published May 2, 2013

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

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of stories from perhaps the best sportswriter in history. A trip down memory lane.

[RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN · Rating 5 out of 5]

RICK “SHAQ” GOLDSTEIN SAYS: “A DOUBLE BIBLE… A BIBLE OF NEARLY 50 YEARS OF SPORTS COLUMNS… & A BIBLE OF CREATIVE… ARTISTIC… USE OF WORDS!”
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Red Smith is inarguably one of the ten greatest sportswriters in history… and it wasn’t just for the near half-century that he blessed the world with his pristine prose… that ranged from Ebbets Field… to boxing canvases’… to pristine lakes and rivers… to horse tracks… to many… many bars in between. When I was a kid of eight years old and started inhaling sports books and biographies and encyclopedias… almost every one had a quote from… or a reference to… Red Smith… so his greatness will live on for eternity through innumerable hardcover archives. He could make you laugh… he could make you cry… and his columns ranged from his anger with a cowardly Jersey Joe Walcott… to the death of Babe Ruth… to his one “sportly” participation… fishing… and his otherworldly use of words could actually tie such diverse locales together as if they were born to. One great example is somehow… almost magically connecting a heavyweight boxing match to the pursuit of a trout:

“On a cast across the brook, the fly was swept close to the concrete abutment. In the clear, swift water there was a flash of pursuit, but the attacker merely pawed with a light jab, then turned and fled like Jersey Joe Walcott. Neither insult nor bribe could tempt him back to fight like a man.”

Oh, my Lord… what a blessing… the invention of words… for Red Smith… and I’m sure the almighty creator of words feels he was blessed by Red Smith!

There are over 500 pages in this book… and over 150 priceless columns from Red Smith… they are so spectacular… that they can make a sports fanatic weep… and jump for joy simultaneously… and the same can be said for a college professor of creative writing. There are two ways I can see enjoying this book… the first is reading a few sports columns at a time… thereby savoring such a precious priceless collection… or putting your head down… and reading one column after another… like there may never be another… and after a couple of days you realize you didn’t stop at times and places you thought you would. My plans were for the former… but I wound up with the latter.

In addition to the boundless treasure of rarefied literature provided by Red Smith within… this book also contains another rarity… a stunning introduction by the editor Daniel Okrent… that means something… that touches you… in the knowledge of the undulating respect… and awe… that he views Red Smith with. Mr. Okrent tells you what qualities of Red… he deems most inspiring… and gives just enough examples to titillate your desires to jump in with both eyes… heart… and soul… without ever giving away too much.

The columns are broken down into the following categories: BASEBALL 1934-1951 – SPORTS IN THE FORTIES – FISHING FOR TROUT – SPORTS IN THE FIFTIES – BASEBALL 1952-1961 – SPORTS IN THE SIXTIES – FISHING FOR BASS – SPORTS IN THE SEVENTIES – BASEBALL 1962-1981.

A copy of this book should be enshrined in multiple Halls Of Fame.. and it should also be used as a text book in creative writing classes in multiple institutions of higher learning!

Note: I originally finished my review with the sentence above… but I actually had a page folded back to remember in the book. Since the editor listed this quote in his introduction and it certainly didn’t diminish the emotional and intellectual impact for me… I don’t believe it will do anything but mesmerize any potential reader. It’s Red Smith’s opening sentences in his infamous column after the New York Giants defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers with Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard round the world” in the 1951 playoff decider:

“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 AGAIN.”

[Nick Callaghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A True Great

I found Smith through my love of baseball, which I discovered late in life. I turned to the history of the game, through writers such as Roger Khan, and finally made my way to Red Smith.

His writing is both evocative and of the now - sometimes he is writing history as it’s happening before him on the field, and that immediacy comes over so well. I actually thought that baseball was all he wrote about, which is why I’m delighted to find this collection containing a number of sports being covered. This is a template for all sports reporters - you really can write about a game with panache while still getting over the main points. Some of his phrasing is breathtaking.

First and foremost he is a journalist, but that is too confining a term. I would be tempted to say he’s a chronicler of the human condition when in contest, but that sounds far too leaden. He would never have written such a bad sentence. It simply wasn’t in him.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really fun. This is a terrific book to have lying around when you've got a minute to read. The articles are short and really evoke the era and the players. While there are many great players chronicled herein, I also love the pieces about obscure players that fill out out the picture of an era.
I have a friend who's having some health problems and whose vision is not very strong, and I often read articles from this book to him. They are only about 3 pages long and often spark conversations that can veer off in myriad directions.
I am delighted to have this book.

[Bruce Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actually, I didn't read this book. I read another called, 'The Best of Red Smith." However, it is not in the goodreads data base, so I am plugging in here. The 'best' is a series of sports articles from the 50's and 60s. Red seems to be a bit over-rated as a 'great' sports writer. I tend to go for the A.J. Leibling type of writer who introduces medieval Arab travelers' observations into a review of a boxing match. Red never does that sort of stuff. Still, it is entertaining, and well written.

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Closer to 4 1/2 stars
If you enjoy well written sports columns, you will highly enjoy this book. Mr. Smith was outstanding at his job & reading his columns was like taking a journey through the history of mid-20th century sports.

[Seann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some day there would be another Red Smith

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

To his credit Red Smith’s writing was so good it inspired hyperbole, for which he can’t be blamed. The dustjacket gets carried away—“the Shakespeare of the pressbox,” says one anonymous blurbist from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; “Red Smith was to sports what Homer was to war,” says another from The New York Times. Smith’s writing is only as good as news writing gets when done to daily deadlines. There is lots of competition for this so it isn’t faint praise or a left-handed compliment. Smith belongs there with the great 20th-century journalists. His work is both perfectly pitched to the times and timeless in its lyrical precision, wry invention, factual accuracy, and generosity of spirit. Among the blurbists, the late David Halberstam gets it exactly right: Smith’s writing “tended to be the best writing in any given newspaper on any given day.”

This career spanning selection is organized in themes bracketed by time: Baseball 1934-1951, Sports in the Forties (and Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies), Baseball 1952-1961, two fishing themed sections: Fishing for Trout, Fishing for Bass, and, finally, Baseball 1962-1981. Smith was particularly fond of baseball, horseracing and fishing, as the structure suggests. But he also covered boxing well, football (college and pro), the Olympics, golf, and other sporting events. The range is good and the writing better because he is entertaining and engrossing even where I don’t care (horseracing and fishing).

He might begin a column this way:

“It could happen only in Brooklyn. Nowhere else in this broad, untidy universe, not in Bedlam nor in Babel nor in the remotest psychopathic ward nor in the sleaziest padded cell could The Thing be.”

What is The Thing? It is a man who could “win a World Series game by striking out.” It is the famous game ending, or would be game ending, third strike that eluded the glove of Dodger catcher Mickey Owen. The game doesn’t end but continues with the batter on first. The next four or five Yankees get hits or walks and they win.

In another World Series column (also involving the Dodgers and Yankees) about a no hitter an out away in the ninth that turned into a Dodger victory when Floyd Bevens, who had walked many despite the no-hits, gave up his first hit to Cookie Lavegetto, scoring two walked batsmen and given the Dodgers the unlikely and sudden win, Smith wrote: “The unhappiest man in Brooklyn is sitting up here now in the far end of the press box. The ‘v’ on his typewriter is broken. He can’t write either Lavagetto or Blevens.”

In the 60s and 70s, Smith, a middle-aged white man, struggled with the loud, wild braggart that was Muhammad Ali and with young men and women who protested. Still, he took Ali’s side against boxing when it took away his license. And he took the side of Tommy Smith and Juan Carlos for their dignified protest at the 1968 Olympics. He took the side of baseball players against owners in their battle to end the reserve clause, which bound players to teams even after their contracts expired. About owners he wrote:

“The men who were running baseball then are all gone today, but the breed is not diminished. Somehow the game continues to attract a familiar type—upright, God-fearing men, more or less law-abiding, with few noticeable flaws except selfishness, arrogance, insensitivity, and bullheaded obstinacy.”

As good as his writing is, his judgments, though not infallible, are as good.
His very last column ended: “Some day there would be another Joe DiMaggio.” So too there will be another Red Smith but not soon, until then there is this collection.

[Richard Munro · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful anthology of sports articles from the Herald Tribune and later NYT by Red Smith, probably the best sports writer of his era. He came from the Vin Scully era (still with us but in its twilight) when sport writers were educated and actually read books. The articles are mostly on baseball but also fishing, racing, boxing etc. There is a memorable article about an Army-Navy game after Kennedy's assassination. There is another moving article about Willie Mays -not yet famous-being called to military service in 1951 during the Korean War. Wonderful turns of speech and original metaphors. A delight to read. These articles are really high prose and historical documents of their time. The older I get the more I realize 1935-1964 was America's Golden Age.

[Jack Schultz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. This collection of Red Smith columns provides insightful perspectives on the mid 20th century sports scene. Many of Mr. Smith's observations are still relevant today. For example, in the 1950s and 60s he opined that the pace of baseball games may be getting too slow, that the growing proliferation of statistics did not paint the entire picture for baseball, and that umpires were not going to be successful determining whether pitchers were intentionally throwing bean balls. I particularly liked one of his later pieces from the early '80s on how misguided the Designated Hitter rule is. All of his observations have withstood the test of time.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Red Smith is simply amazing. That he was able to crank out prose of that quality day after day . . . wow. It's no wonder he's been called "the Shakespeare of the press box." Some of the references are dated, but this is a must-read for anyone who enjoys a) writing about sports 2) sports and/or 3) good writing.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book covers 1934-1981, with an emphasis on baseball. I picked it up hoping for potential Braves and Henry Aaron content, and was largely disappointed in that, but I was very pleased in what I actually found.

[John Uzzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was not a big fan of the fishing columns but all the rest were wonderful.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

What current sports columnist is going to be read 50 years from now, much less warrant a Library of America edition?