on-writing-well

Sports 183
tions suffered by Georgia's Zeke Bratkowski against Georgia
Tech in 1951.
Reaves s performance left him only a few yards short of
the S.E.C. season total offense record of 2,187 set by Georgia's
Frank Sinkwich in 11 games in 1942. And his two touchdown
passes against Auburn left him only one touchdown
pass short of the S.E.C. season record of 23 set in 1950 by
Kentucky's Babe Parilli.. . .
Those are the first five paragraphs of a six-paragraph story
that was prominently displayed in my New York newspaper, a
long way from Auburn. It has a certain mounting hilarity—a figure
freak amok at his typewriter. But can anybody read it? And
does anybody care? Only Zeke Bratkowski—finally off the hook.
Sports is one of the richest fields now open to the nonfiction
writer. Many authors better known for "serious" books have
done some of their most solid work as observers of athletic combat.
John McPhee's Levels of the Game, George Plimpton's
Paper Lion and George F. Will's Men at Work—books about
tennis, pro football and baseball—take us deeply into the lives
of the players. In mere detail they have enough information to
keep any fan happy. But what makes them special is their
humanity. Who is this strange bird, the winning athlete, and
what engines keep him going? One of the classics in the literature
of baseball is "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," John Updike's
account of Ted Williams's final game, on September 28, 1960,
when the 42-year-old "Kid," coming up for his last time at bat in
Fenway Park, hit one over the wall. But before that Updike has
distilled the essence of "this brittle and temperamental player":
... of all team sports, baseball, with its graceful intermittences
of action, its immense and tranquil field sparsely settled
with poised men in white, its dispassionate mathematics,
seems to me best suited to accommodate, and be ornamented