The Good Old Days

What an old-fashioned pleasure this book is! Red Smith is a champion among sportswriters and The Red Smith Reader, edited by Dave Anderson (another champion), proves his accolades are well-deserved.

The flavor of this book is decidedly retro, a plus or a minus depending on your perspective. I found some of the pieces a little hokey by modern standards -- in the same way that old news stories can give you that "classic movie" feel. 

The columns collected here span the years 1934 to 1982 (the year Smith died at age 76) and subjects range from the expected football, baseball, boxing, and the Olympics to politics and colleagues, with stops at rodeo, fishing, and cricket. It's a wide swath and throughout, Smith has the ear for the telling phrases and the eye for the telling details that make his scenes come alive. He also has a knack for the words -- particularly verbs -- that work the magic. Read and recognize, in the example below, the perfection of "lugged," "rampaging," and "flinging." 

There's a reason he's one of the greatest, as this book clearly shows.

Excerpt: ("Bass Derby" - 1950)

At Menemsha Bight the bass-slayers got into hip boots and rubberized overalls and waterproofed parkas and lugged their tackle down to the beach. The tide was rampaging out through a narrow cut and there were perhaps half a dozen fisherman casting into the current from the rock jetty, with a dozen or more strung out along the beach flinging their feathered jigs into the surf. The jigs, or plugs, or tin squids, are cigar-sized gobbets of lead with feather tails which, it is optimistically hoped, will look edible to large stupid fish.