Red Smith On Baseball; The Game's Greatest Writer on the Game's Greatest Years

xi, [1], 363, [7] pages. Foreword by Ira Berkow. Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith (September 25, 1905 – January 15, 1982) was an American sportswriter. Smith’s journalistic career spanned over five decades and his work influenced an entire generation of writers. In 1976, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Author David Halberstam called Smith "the greatest sportswriter of two eras." Walter Wellesley Smith (he began calling himself "Red" Smith as he loathed his birth name). After high school, Smith moved on to the University of Notre Dame and graduated in 1927. After graduation, Smith wrote letters to at least 100 newspapers asking for a job. Finally, he was picked up by the Milwaukee Sentinel. Smith then worked for the St. Louis Star as a sportswriter. This is where Smith developed his humorous and literate style that made his writing so beloved and respected. After his stint in St. Louis, Smith worked at the Philadelphia Record for nine years, from 1936 to 1945. After 18 years, Smith joined the New York Herald Tribune in 1945. He cemented his reputation with the Herald Tribune, as his column, "Views of Sports", was widely read and often syndicated. Smith wrote three or four columns a week that were printed by 275 newspapers in the United States and 225 in about 30 foreign nations. When the Herald Tribune folded in 1966, Smith became a freelance writer. In 1971, at the age of 66, he was hired by The New York Times and wrote four columns a week for the next decade, sometimes devoting 18 hours a day to them. Red Smith's writing is recognized as the best in the field. Here is a selection of his most memorable columns, 175 of them, from 1941 to 1981. His prose.offers lasting lessons about matters journalistic and literary. --Robert Schmuhl, University of Notre Dame. The most admired and gifted sportswriter of his time. Red Smith's work.tended to be the best writing in any given newspaper on any given day.--David Halberstam, New York Times Book Review. Smith mainly wrote about the sports that interested him such as baseball, football, boxing, and horse racing. He had a distaste for basketball (which he called "whistleball") and hockey, and often wrote about one of his passions, fly fishing for trout. Many of Smith's fishing stories were written in a self-deprecating manner and he often spoke of how embarrassingly bad he was at it. In 1956, one of Smith’s columns earned him the second Grantland Rice Memorial for outstanding sportswriting. He wrote in a journalistic style and avoided the flowery language and cliches of many sportswriters. During his time with The New York Times, Smith garnered many awards. In 1976, he was the second sportswriter to win the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, citing "his commentary on sports in 1975 and for many other years". Smith was honored (along with Harold Kaese) with the J. G. Taylor Spink Award by the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) in December 1976, bestowed during 1977 ceremonies at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Additionally, the Associated Press awarded him the first Red Smith Award for "outstanding contributions to sports journalism". Derived from a Kirkus review: Pulitzer Prize-winning Smith (who died in 1982) was a legendary voices in American sports journalism—particularly in baseball. This wonderful collection reminds us why. Although Smith covered sports from 1926 to 1981, this collection only includes his writings from 1940 through the end of his career. The earlier years in this period—from the 1946 season (when baseball returned from WWII) to the late 1950s—are remembered by many fans as the golden era of the game, and Smith’s coverage of it stands to this day as some of the best sportswriting ever penned. His columns ran the gamut from obituaries of the game's greats (such as Walter "Big Train" Johnson and Casey Stengel) to play-by-play rundowns of some of the most memorable games ever witnessed (such as the 1951 play.…