The Only Game in Town: Sportswriting from the New Yorker

The Only Game in Town: Sportswriting from the New Yorker
Edited by David Remnick
Random House, 2010. 492 pages. Non-fiction

I am not really in the soul-selling market, but I would give a whole lot to be able to write even one sentence as well as Roger Angell writes every sentence. Likewise for A. J. Liebling, Ring Lardner, and John Updike. And Adam Gopnik. In this volume, all these guys write about sports: baseball, boxing, horse racing, the Olympics. Martin Amis trashes the "personalities" of tennis and Ben McGrath tries to demystify the knuckleball. In addition to the lovely, precise prose about the games we love to watch and play, The Only Game in Town includes a judicious sprinkling of New Yorker sports cartoons; e.g., a cow pole vaulting towards a distant moon and a guy calling for a ride to a round of golf because his wife is leaving him and taking the car. If you like sports stories, exquisitely well-written, this really is the only game in town.