The sub-title for this sports book is "The Game's Greatest Writer on the Game's Greatest Years". There would be many who would argue with this publisher's hype.
But there won't be many who would argue that Red Smith was among the best in a long line of legendary baseball writers. RED SMITH ON BASEBALL (Ivan R. Dee publishers, 363 pages, $24.95) is a collection of Red's most memorable columns, 167 total, from 1941 to 1981. And there is not a loser in the whole batch.
(Legendary people Smith wrote about include: Jackie Robinson, Casey Stengel, Willie Mays, Bill Veeck, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, Yogi and Campy and Gil Hodges.)
Walter W. (Red) Smith hit his prime in 1945 as a sports columnist for the "New York Herald Tribune". When that newspaper went out of business, he became the main sports columnist for the "New York Times" until his death in January 1982. That time period and those two newspapers serve as the well from which the columns in this book were drawn.
"New York Times" sports columnist Ira Berkow, Smith's biographer, wrote the foreword to the book. He explained that while Smith "wrote on subjects from the Olympics to harness racing, from Super Bowls to hoops, it may be that he loved baseball best of all". Red had a lot of practice writing about baseball, as early as 1929 when he was 24 years old.
The book starts off with a column Smith wrote in October 1941 - Winning by Striking Out. "It could happen only in Brooklyn," Smith begins. "Nowhere else in this broad, untidy universe, not in Bedlam nor in Babel nor in the remotest psychopathic ward nor the sleaziest padded cell could the Thing be.
"Only in the ancestral home of the Dodgers which knew the goofy glories of Babe Herman could a man win a World Series by striking out."
That is a mouthful.
And the book ends with a column called "Leave Him to the Angels" written January 18, 1981. "A young woman asked: 'What was Casey Stengel like?' I thought she was pulling my leg when I realized she was nine years old when Casey, retiring as manager of the New York Mets, dropped out of public view." The rest of the column is a reprint of wandering, confusing, circuitous yet insightful remarks on baseball - remarks Casey made on July 9, 1958 before the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly. It is delightful.
The comment "Baseball is dull only to those with dull minds," was attributed to Red Smith, who many called "The Shakespeare of the Press Box". To browse through the pages of RED SMITH ON BASEBALL is to realize how nuanced, how interesting and how immortal the game and its characters are. (2000)
» Harvey Frommer is the author of 30 sports books, including "The New York Yankee Encyclopedia" and "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball,"and "Growing Up Baseball" with Frederic J. Frommer. His latest A YANKEE CENTURY will be published by Berkley in October 2002.
Also by Harvey Frommer
» The Barry Halper Collection of Baseball Memorabilia: Sports Book Review
» Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson
» Remembering Irving Rudd
» Subway Series
» Midsummer Classic: Midsummer Mockery
» Yankee Stadium's First Opening Day
» The Birth of Baseball's First Professional Team
» Yankee Stadium's First Opening Day
» Gehrig's Streak
» Willie Mays and the Month of May
» Reese was no Pee Wee
» Yankees vs. Red Sox: Baseball's Greatest Rivalry
» Celebrating Hank Greenberg
» Bobby Thomson's Famous Homer Lives On
» Remembering the Yankee Clipper: Joe DiMaggio
» Shoeless Joe Remains a Scapegoat
» The Mets Have Always Been Amazing
» More submissions
Copyright © 2002 by Harvey Frommer. Posted July 8, 2002.
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