Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted Williams - (Hardcover)

About the Book

On the 50th anniversary of Ted Williams' last at-bat comes the definitive new edition of the Updike classic that set the standard for sports writing, prepared by the author just months before his death.

Book Synopsis

On September 28, 1960--a day that will live forever in the hearts of fans--Red Sox slugger Ted Williams stepped up to the plate for his last at-bat in Fenway Park. Seizing the occasion, he belted a solo home run--a storybook ending to a storied career.

In the stands that afternoon was twenty-eight-year-old John Updike, inspired by the moment to make his lone venture into the field of sports reporting. More than just a matchless account of that fabled final game, Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu is a brilliant evocation of Williams' entire tumultuous life in baseball.

Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of the dramatic exit of baseball's greatest hitter, The Library of America presents a commemorative edition of Hub Fans, prepared by the author just months before his death. To the classic final version of the essay, long out-of-print, Updike added an autobiographical preface and a substantial new afterword.

Review Quotes

Praise through the decades for HUB FANS BID KID ADIEU
"The most celebrated baseball essay ever."
-Roger Angell

"Updike on Williams is a stirring spectacle. Nothing he wrote can top this astonishing piece."
-David Margolick

"The greatest writer, in the greatest ballpark, on the greatest hitter who ever lived."
-Dan Shaughnessy

"No sportswriter ever wrote anything better."
-Garrison Keillor

"The piece that changed the way the sport is written. Updike made baseball the lyricist's game."
-Peter Gammons

"Updike was a baseball writer only once, yet he wrote the finest baseball story I know of. He and Ted Williams shared a singular ambition: to be the best that ever played the game."
-Richard Ben Cramer

"It has the mystique."
-Ted Williams

About the Author

John Updike (1932-2009) was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker. He is the author of more than sixty books, including collections of short stories, poems, essays, and criticism. His novels won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle, and the Howells Medal, among other honors.