Pafko at the Wall
By Don DeLillo
- Release Date: 2008-06-30
- Genre: Classics
Description
"There's a long drive.
It's gonna be.
I believe.
The Giants win the pennant.
The Giants win the pennant.
The Giants win the pennant.
The Giants win the pennant."
-- Russ Hodges, October 3, 1951
On the fiftieth anniversary of "The Shot Heard Round the World," Don DeLillo reassembles in fiction the larger-than-life characters who on October 3, 1951, witnessed Bobby Thomson's pennant-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning. Jackie Gleason is razzing Toots Shor in Leo Durocher's box seats; J. Edgar Hoover, basking in Sinatra's celebrity, is about to be told that the Russians have tested an atomic bomb; and Russ Hodges, raw-throated and excitable, announces the game -- the Giants and the Dodgers at the Polo Grounds in New York. DeLillo's transcendent account of one of the iconic events of the twentieth century is a masterpiece of American sportswriting.
Reviews
Finest writing ever
5By August JuneThis short piece is possibly the best written piece of fiction I have ever read. It ranges from inspiration to hilarity to deep character study to great baseball writing. But don't buy this, buy Underworld--this is the exquisite prologue to DeLillo's huge, strange novel of the Cold War, the Bronx, baseball, waste management, and many other things. It will rattle around in your head for a long time.
