An all-star collection of the best fiction and nonfiction writing about baseball's most exciting moment

The game of baseball is full of moments of greatness. But no moment during a game elicits the roar of the crowd as does the hitting of a home run. And, as witnessed during the past few seasons, home-run fever has swept the fans and the players. Now George Plimpton, famed sports amateur and chronicler of the game of baseball-among many other sports-collects the best writing about the moment a home run is hit. From a memoir of Ted Williams's 1946 All-Star game homer to a fictional visit Babe Ruth made to Lake Wobegon, from Mark McGwire's 69th and 70th home runs to Hank Aaron's pursuit of the Babe's record to Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard 'Round the World," we see the effects on the athletes and the fans of that ineffable moment when wood hits leather and the ball sails out over the stands.

This delightful and absorbing collection is the most complete, most authoritative, and most compelling assemblage of home-run writing ever put together.

Includes glorious prose by John Updike, Don DeLillo, Roger Angell, Paul Gallico, Grantland Rice, Red Smith, Robert Creamer, Garrison Keillor, Donald Hall, Rick Reilly, and Rick Telander, among others.

A MESSAGE FROM DANIEL PAISNER:

“I’m just a contributor to this one, but I include it here among my greatest and not-so-greatest hits because it was a special thrill to be welcomed in on such as this. Oh, man . . . George Plimpton himself called me one afternoon to see if I would consider allowing him to include an excerpt from my 1999 book The Ball: Mark McGwire’s 70th Home Run Ball and the Marketing of the American Dream, which had just been published by Viking to grudging acclaim. At first, I thought it was a prank call - some writer-ish pal who happened to do a killer George Plimpton impression. But, no, it was the man himself, so I went from thinking it was a prank to some sort of terrible mistake. Mr. Plimpton allowed, quite kindly, that he was particularly struck by my account of McGwire’s record-establishing blasts, and I was overcome. (Really, as the kids say, I was verklempt.) Naturally, I wanted to talk to him about ‘Paper Lion,’ or Sidd Finch, or that marvelous oral history he’d put together about Edie Sedgwick, but he couldn’t chat for too terribly long - probably, he had to race off to practice with the New York Philharmonic or go a couple rounds with Sugar Ray Robinson. And so now here I am, in the same damn ballpark as Grantland Rice, Don DeLillo, Roger Angell, Red Smith, Bernard Malamud, John Updike - a regular Murder’s Row, huh?”