Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted Williams
Where to buy Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted Williams books online?
- ISBN13: 9781598530711
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
On September 28, 1960-a day that will live forever in the hearts of fans-Red Sox slugger Ted Williams stepped up to the plate for his last at-bat in Fenway Park. Seizing the occasion, he belted a solo home run- a storybook ending to a storied career. In the stands that afternoon was 28-year-ancient John Updike, inspired by the moment to make his lone venture into the meadow of sports reporting. More than just a matchless account of that fabled final game, Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu is a brilliant evocation of Williams’ competitive spirit, an intensity of dedication that still “crowds the throat with joy.”
Now, on the 50th anniversary of the dramatic exit of baseball’s greatest hitter, The Library of America presents a commemorative edition of Hub Fans, prepared by the leader just months before his death. To the classic final version of the essay, long out-of- print, Updike added an autobiographical preface and a substantial new afterword. Here is a baseball book for the ages, a fan’s notes of the very highest order.
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“Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” is John Updike’s loving tribute to the character and craft of Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams. First published in The New Yorker magazine a few weeks after Updike sat in the stands of Fenway Park watching Williams’ final at bat on September 28, 1960, the essay has over the years attracted the highest praise from trustworthy observers. Some of these accolades appear in the Editorial Reviews section above. The praise is accurate and deserved.
If you follow baseball and care about its storied past, or admire the writing of John Updike, then you will delight in reading this piece. If you take place to belong to both camps — if you’re an Updike fan AND a baseball fan — then place this at the top of your list of must-reads.
The question is whether you should spend your money on this particular setting of “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.” The article is available online where it can be read for free on several websites, including that of The New Yorker. In book form the piece has been much anthologized. It appears alongside contributions from the likes of William Carlos Williams, Don DeLillo, and Stephen King, in the elegant 721-page hardcover volume, “Baseball: A Literary Anthology.” It can be establish in “The Greatest Baseball Tales Ever Told: Thirty Unforgettable Tales from the Diamond” (paperback), edited by Jeff Silverman, where it hides amongst 30 fiction and nonfiction pieces from a motley crew of writers such as Doris Kearns Godwin, Pete Hamill, Ring Lardner, P.G. Wodehouse, Vin Scully (on Sandy Koufax), and Abbott and Costello (whose “Who’s on First” comic routine is gloriously reprinted in its entirety).
The answer to why you might choose to buy this latest issuance of John Updike on Ted Williams comes down to personal inclination, convenience, corniness, maybe even aesthetics. The essay has a special-ness to it. Its pages offer a sharp character study, a lyrical capturing of a moment of grace, and an essential moral lesson. It is, to use the corny metaphor, a tiny gem. Reflect of Duke Ellington’s description of Ella Fitzgerald: “beyond category.” The quality-conscious publishers at The Library of America respect excellent writing and have taken care to design the book, simply as a physical object, to be a pleasing product to hold in your hands.
Three photos of Ted Williams grace the book: one is in color on the jacket (you see it pictured here on Amazon, above). The second, in black and white, is used as the frontispiece and shows the slugger ascending to the Fenway meadow on his final day. The third photo is near-sepia in color and is spread horizontally across the front and back boards, freezing in time his celebrated swing — and building this hardback look just as fine with or lacking its jacket. Inside, the main essay from 1960 (with a dozen fact-laden footnotes Updike added a few years later) is, of course, the huge draw. This text (33 pages in this wide-margined edition) is flanked by a three-page Preface, written only weeks before Updike died in 2009, and a meandering nine-page Afterword that served as an obituary for the ballplayer who died in 2002. The preface and afterward may strike you as workmanlike exercises — common stones wildly outshone by the diamond at the center of the book.
Bottom line: if you’re looking for a gift for a name open to the call of baseball and its emotional and intellectual appeal, this is a excellent choice. The book would also be a classy gift for a reader who’s read Updike’s novels and fleeting tales but is unaware that the leader penned, at the start of his career, one of the best nonfiction essays ever written.
Addendum: A 34-second video of Ted Williams’ last at bat at Fenway Park on September 28, 1960 is available online (Google the words, YouTube last at bat). If you watch it, pay special heed as Williams rounds third and heads for home. At that moment the cameraman pans up to show the crowd in the stands behind third base, the very section where John Updike was on his feet joining in the stadium-wide “persuasive screaming.” The tape is too pixilated for us to spot him. But he’s there, absorbing the moment — and starting work on his own piece for the ages.
(Mike Ettner)
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5