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August 3, 2013 11:21 PM   Subscribe

Thurman Munson In Sun And Shade

Friday was the 34th anniversary of Thurman Munson's death. The story linked above was originally published in the September 1999 issue of Esquire.

By Michael Paterniti. GQ published his "Best GQ Long Reads" this past Wednesday. They are:

* The 15-Year Layover (2003) — "The story that inspired Spielberg's The Terminal"
* The Heartbreak Boys of Coogee Beach (2004) — "An Australian rugby team stares back at its incomprehensible grief"
* XXXXL (2005) — "Life lessons from the world's tallest man"
* The Man Who Would Fly (2006) — "The weightless genius of architect Santiago Calatrava"
* I Do. I Do. I Do. I Do. I Do. I Do. (2007) — "One man. Nine marriages. Confessions of a serial husband"
* The Lost King of France (2008) — "The rightful heir to the French throne makes his claim"
* Never Forget (2009) — "A journey back into the black heart of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime"
* The Suicide Catcher (2010) — "The unlikely angel guarding the legendary Chinese bridge where people come day after day to end their lives" (Previously)
* The Man Who Sailed His House (2011) — "The impossible story of one man's loss and survival in the wake of the 2011 Japanese tsunami" (Previously)
* The Luckiest Village (2013) — "An entire town in Spain wins the national lottery" (Previously)

Deadspin is archiving outstanding stories covering a wide range of topics in a curated tag on their website called The Stacks. The Best Of The Stacks (So Far).
posted by zarq (9 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm finding it really, really hard to read Never Forget. Can anyone recommend a book that explains how things got so horrible, so fast?
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:31 AM on August 4, 2013


I remember reading Bruce Shlain's Oddballs: Baseball's Greatest Pranksters, Flakes, Hot Dogs & Hotheads and coming across Munson as one of baseball's ultimate hotheads. I guess that he would have eventually been traded to the Indians. I wonder if he would have held out with the Yankees' considering they won no championships between 1978 and 1996 and only one AL pennant between 1981 and 1996. I expect that had he lived he could have been like Gary Carter was to the Mets.
posted by parmanparman at 5:00 AM on August 4, 2013


Thanks--outstanding writing and usually I don't want anything loner than two pages and then in bullet points ( unless it is a mystery set Scandinavia, Iceland, UK or Ireland).
posted by rmhsinc at 8:37 AM on August 4, 2013


Thanks for posting!
posted by noaccident at 9:11 AM on August 4, 2013 [1 favorite]


I didn't want to be the first comment when I read this 8 hours ago, but now that I won't be, here goes.

This is awful writing. I mean Dan Brownian stuff. What does it mean that Munson ran to third base "like he's taking Omaha beach"? Was he wading through surf, or were people shooting at him, or is it just that he was wearing a helmet? Just what did he do that "turtling his head around" is a description of? In the other one I sampled, rain "slithered down." Did it meander back and forth, taking a serpentine path to the ground? I am confused by this sort of verbiage. Perhaps someone can clarify, since Paterniti does not.

English can be a wonderfully expressive language, but some writers fill up their stories with irrelevant and confusing flair. I don't read them, when I can avoid it.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 10:22 AM on August 4, 2013


I seen rain slither, don't tell me it don't.
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 10:59 AM on August 4, 2013 [3 favorites]


Great post. Especially great for me riding a train with mediocre internet to New York remembering, as always almost too late, why I love baseball, sometimes.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:55 PM on August 4, 2013


I give you a man who made horrible writing to tell stories about one of my childhood heroes.
posted by plinth at 6:23 PM on August 4, 2013


Guys, lets make a movie based on this article we can start by brainstorming titles "Munson and Fords" um idk ok your turn...
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:24 PM on August 4, 2013


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