Travel to the outer reaches of New York reminds you that the universe is expanding. If you just keep running a la Gump, it doesn’t take long to rock the suburbs. Bridging Ridgewood, Flushing, and Forest Hills, the West Side Tennis Club is accessible from several MTA lines. But if you’re prepared to bring your own coffee and pee in a sushi restaurant that looks like the mansion from the end of Scarface, it’s a breezy ninety minute walk from […]
Morning Bites: Murakami excerpt, Rudy Wurlitzer, Maus, John Locke, Wild Flag, tennis, and more
The first post-Irene bites includes an excerpt, the Wild Flag album, John Locke’s birthday, some tennis stuff, and much more.
Death in Tennis by John Stephens
If such things can be declared (they can, though needn’t be agreed upon), I declare John Updike’s 1960 New Yorker essay on Ted Williams last at bat to be the most illuminative moment in the history of sports journalism. The mind of the reader cannot help but being left imprinted by the light of such images as the Kid standing on third base like Donatello’s David, and that of rounding the bases, after exploding the crowd with his last-at-bat home […]