Clik here to view.
New York Minute
Got off the train on 231 and Broadway one night last week and saw a guy selling books on the street. The man was barely holding it together and he didn’t look to have much of anything but then I saw...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Clik here to view.
BGS: Cobb Refuses to be the Retiring Kind
We’ve got a special week of Dexter for you–four columns he wrote about his friend Randall “Tex” Cobb when Cobb fought against Larry Holmes for the heavyweight championship. Each day for the rest of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
BGS: Gifts Aren’t Everything
Here’s the second of four columns by Pete Dexter on Randall Cobb’s championship fight against Larry Holmes. (The first one is here.) Reprinted with the author’s permission… Dig in. “Gifts Aren’t...
View ArticleClik here to view.
BGS: Randall’s Serious
Here is third of four Dexter columns on the Cobb-Holmes fight (you can find the first two: here and here). This story is reprinted with the author’s permission. “Randall’s Serious” By Pete Dexter...
View ArticleClik here to view.
BGS: An Advanced Game of Tag
And so, here is the fourth of Pete Dexter’s columns on the Cobb-Holmes fight. It appears here with the author’s permission. (Click here for Part One, Two and Three.) “An Advanced Game of Tag” By Pete...
View ArticleClik here to view.
BGS: Night For Joe Louis
Red Smith is the most respected sports columnist we’ve ever had. In his prime, Jimmy Cannon, Smith’s friendly rival, was certainly as well-known. Cannon, the Voice of New York, was an emotional,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
BGS: My Dinner with Ali
My Dinner With Ali Adapted from the original, which was published in 1989 in the Louisville Courier-Journal Magazine. A postscript from Glenn Stout, editor of Houghton Mifflin’s Best American...
View ArticleClik here to view.
BGS: Battling Siki
More from John Lardner. Originally published in 1949 in the New Yorker and reprinted here with permission of Susan Lardner. “The Battling Siki” By John Lardner Hell’s Kitchen, the region west of Eighth...
View ArticleClik here to view.
BGS: The Loser
Here’s a keeper from Gay Talese. Originally published in the March 1964 issue of Esquire. Reprinted here with the author’s permission. At the foot of a mountain in upstate New York, about 60 miles from...
View ArticleClik here to view.
BGS: Great Men Die Twice
Another gem. Originally published in the June 1989 issue of Esquire. Republished here with the permission of the late author’s son, Mark Kram Jr., a wonderful storyteller in his own right. His...
View ArticleClik here to view.
BGS: The Better Man
“The Better Man” By Juan Williams Originally published in the May 17, 1987, edition of The Washington Post Magazine. Republished here with the author’s permission. His postscript follows. For more on...
View ArticleClik here to view.
BGS: Tyson the Terrible
From our man Pete, republished with her permission, this story originally appeared in Playboy back in 1988. By Pete Dexter Back in the early Sixties, when Floyd Patterson was still heavyweight champion...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Requiem for a Welterweight
I’m late on this but in case you missed it do yourself a favor and check out Brin-Jonathan Butler’s portrait of Manny Pacquiao for SB Nation Longform: After eight frustrating years, four...
View ArticleClik here to view.
BGS: Greatness Revisited
Muhammad Ali “shocked the world” 50 years ago today when he beat Sonny Liston to become the heavyweight champion of the world. Since then Ali has been written about more than any famous athlete. He’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
BGS: The Hippest Guy in the Room
Not everyone gets Humphrey Bogart to play them in the movies. Harold Conrad did. In Mark Jacobson’s pitch-perfect story of the ultimate been-everywhere-done-everything knock-around guy, Conrad and a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Clik here to view.
BGS: The Mongoose
Bunch of years ago, my pal John Schulian hipped me to “The Mongoose”, Jack Murphy’s long 1961 New Yorker profile of Archie Moore. Murphy was a sports writer in San Diego–you remember, they named the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Phantom Punch
Guest Columnist Allen Barra Of all the ledes in all the stories inspired by the Ali-Liston “Phantom Punch” fight, I liked best the one by my late friend Barbara Long wrote for The Village Voice fifty...
View ArticleClik here to view.
He Loves to Say Her Name
Here is our pal John Schulian’s 1980 column on Jake LaMotta, who passed away a few days ago at the age of 95. It is reprinted here with the author’s permission.—AB She keeps dabbing at her left eye...
View Article
