From time to time, we'll select stories — old and new, sports and otherwise, relevant and merely sublime — that we urge you to read for one reason or another. Today: a fitting memorial for Bobby Thomson.
"Miracle of Coogan's Bluff," by Red Smith (from the New York Herald Tribune, October 4, 1951)
Suggested readers: Fans of baseball, mourners of sportswriting the way it used to be.
Outstream Video
00:00
00:00
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.
Down on the green and white and earth-brown geometry of the playing field, a drunk tries to break through the ranks of ushers marshalled along the foul lines to keep profane feet off the diamond. The ushers thrust him back and he lunges at them, struggling in the clutch of two or three men. He breaks free and four or five tackle him. He shakes them off, bursts through the line, runs head on into a special park cop who brings him down with a flying tackle.
Read Full Article »