{"id":830,"date":"2010-09-28T00:03:02","date_gmt":"2010-09-28T04:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2010\/09\/28\/read-this-hub-fans-bid-kid-adieu\/"},"modified":"2010-09-26T21:18:53","modified_gmt":"2010-09-27T01:18:53","slug":"read-this-hub-fans-bid-kid-adieu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2010\/09\/28\/read-this-hub-fans-bid-kid-adieu\/","title":{"rendered":"Read This: Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image829\" src=\"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/hub-fans.jpg\" alt=\"hub-fans.jpg\" align=\"right\" \/>Fifty years ago, Ted Williams played his last major league baseball game; &#8220;on an impulse,&#8221; John Updike would recall years later, &#8220;I bought in for a few dollars&#8230; and the park was two-thirds empty. I was moved to write about the events of that game, in part because his departure, taking with it the heart of Boston baseball, had been so meagerly witnessed.&#8221; The essay Updike wrote, &#8220;Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,&#8221; was published in <i>The New Yorker<\/i> a month later, and has been widely praised not only as one of the author&#8217;s best nonfiction works, but as one of the greatest pieces on baseball by any author. Earlier this year, it was republished in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powells.com\/partner\/29017\/biblio\/1598530712\">a commemorative Library of America edition<\/a>, which is itself a fine bit of publishing. (Be sure to take off the Chip Kidd-designed dust jacket, even if only for a moment, to look upon the photograph reproduced on the book&#8217;s casing.)<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not a long essay, but Updike managed to fit a lot of tribute into it&#8212;recounting not only Williams&#8217; performance in his final appearance at Fenway Park, and the reactions of Updike&#8217;s fellow fans, but also the exemplary features of the slugger&#8217;s long career in Boston, as well as his contentious relationship with the local press. It is a partisan account, but not belligerent in its advocacy, and though a bit florid in spots (&#8220;After a prime so hassled and hobbled, Williams was granted by the relenting fates a golden twilight&#8221;), it holds up as one of the most genuine expressions of fandom I&#8217;ve had the good fortune to read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fifty years ago, Ted Williams played his last major league baseball game; &#8220;on an impulse,&#8221; John Updike would recall years later, &#8220;I bought in for a few dollars&#8230; and the park was two-thirds empty. I was moved to write about the events of that game, in part because his departure, taking with it the heart [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}