Updike the Incomparable

John Updike was not a sportswriter. He was a novelist, poet, short story writer, essayist, critic, man of letters and a raging intellectual.

But John Updike, who died Monday of lung cancer at the age of 76, left a mark on sport. His four "Rabbit" novels featured a one-time high school basketball star who had a difficult time making the transformation from acclaimed small-town high school jock to fully functioning adult. He was a big fan of golf and he left behind a prodigious body of work on that topic. And then there was baseball.

Talk about making a statement. To the best of my knowledge, John Updike rarely wrote about baseball. But he attended the Red Sox-Orioles game on Sept. 28,1960 at Fenway Park and he was therefore witness to Ted Williams's last game and his storied last at-bat,which produced a home run. He was moved to write about his experience and what he produced was, in my judgment and that of many others, the greatest essay ever written about American sport. It appeared in his beloved New Yorker in the Oct. 22 edition, and what it did was elevate sports description to a height no ordinary sportswriter could ever hope to attain. He elevated the discourse even as he was shaming those of us who lack his immense vocabulary, education and powers of description, not to mention sense of humor.

Updike was 28. He was well-established at the New Yorker as a staff writer, but he had yet to establish himself as a premier novelist. He did not intend to produce a masterpiece. He simply attended a game (a last-minute decision based on the fact that a woman he had hoped to visit that afternoon was not at home), and, struck by the scene and the great eighth-inning drama, he submitted a story.

If nothing else, he left us with a description of Fenway Park that now casually rolls off all our tongues. He began the essay by saying that "Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark." That much many people remember. But he did not stop there.

"Everything," he continued, "is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg. It was built in 1912 and rebuilt in 1934, and offers, as do most Boston artifacts, a compromise between Man's Euclidean determinations and Nature's beguiling irregularities."

Yeah, well, wish I'd said that.

He tells us that he had been drawn to Ted Williams from afar, growing up in small-town Pennsylvania where "W'ms, lf" always seemed to be going 3-for-5 in the box score. A bit later on, he explains the relationship between Williams and Boston.

"The affair between Boston and Ted Williams has been no mere summer romance: it has been a marriage composed of mutual disappointments and, toward the end, a mellowing hoard of shared memories. It falls into three stages, which may be termed Youth, Maturity and Age; or Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis; or Jason, Achilles and Nestor."

Like Annie Oakley, John Updike was just doing what came naturally.

Here is Updike on a Ted Williams home run.

"I remember watching one of his home runs from the bleachers of Shibe Park; it went over the first baseman's head and rose meticulously on a straight line and was still rising when it cleared the fence. The trajectory seemed qualitatively different from anything anyone else might hit."

I love this next view of Williams, if only because the entire circumstance speaks to a different time and place. We no longer have lazy, hazy August games played before sparse crowds.

"For me," Updike wrote, "Williams is the classic ballplayer of the game on a hot August weekday, before a small crowd, when the only thing at stake is the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill."

Apropos of nothing other than how spot-on this must have seemed to 1960 Boston readers, Updike offered the following. "A tight little flock of human sparrows, who, from the lambent and pampered pink of their faces,could only have been Boston politicians, moved toward the plate."

Here is the epic moment, as recorded by John Updike.

"Fisher threw the third time. Williams swung again, and there it was. The ball climbed on a diagonal line into the vast volume of air over center field. From my angle, behind third base, the ball seemed less an object in flight than the tip of a towering, motionless construct, like the Eiffel Tower or Tappan Zee Bridge. It was in the books while it was still in the sky."

Can you imagine how excited the Tappan Zee Bridge must have been to find itself in the company of the Eiffel Tower?

Then, of course, the payoff, the line that, aside from "lyric little bandbox of a ballpark," is the most oft-quoted from this piece of literary brilliance.

"The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never did and he did not now. Gods do not answer letters."

Count me among the many who have frequently misquoted that splendid line by saying, "Gods don't answer letters", when, in fact, the actual line is "Gods do not answer letters." It makes a difference. If Updike had wished to use a contraction, I'm sure he would have. Or would've. But he did not. Or didn't.

I had three encounters with John Updike, spread over 31 years. There was a chance meeting at the LaGuardia luggage carousel at the conclusion of an Eastern shuttle in the fall of 1977.

There was a postcard exchange a number of years later -- Updike was known far and wide for communicating via postcard -- when, in the course of writing one of the "Rabbit" novels, he was seeking proper detail about the backboard shattering proclivities of Darryl Dawkins.

Finally, there was a wonderful phone conversation last September. I wished to write about the great Williams essay on the occasion of the event's 48th anniversary. I was put in touch with him, and he admitted to being amazed at the essay's lasting impact.

If you're John Updike, a notable prodigious writer of books, short stories, poems and countless book criticisms, it's a bit difficult to accept that, for some people, you're the guy who, in one long-ago essay, wrote about Ted Williams hitting a home run and applied a lasting description to a baseball park. Once he left that ballpark on the overcast September afternoon, John Updike believed he had bigger fish to fry.

So here's a suggestion for John Henry and Larry Lucchino: commission a very big plaque. It will say the following:

FENWAY PARK, IN BOSTON, IS A LYRIC LITTLE BANDBOX OF A BALLPARK. EVERYTHING IS PAINTED GREEN AND SEEMS IN CURIOUSLY SHARP FOCUS, LIKE THE INSIDE OF AN OLD-FASHIONED EASTER EGG. IT WAS BUILT IN 1912 AND REBUILT IN 1934 AND OFFERS, AS DO MOST BOSTON ARTIFACTS, A COMPROMISE BETWEEN MAN'S EUCLIDEAN DETERMINATIONS AND NATURE'S BEGUILING IRREGULARITIES. JOHN UPDIKE, 1960

Then they hang that plaque over the main entrance on Yawkey Way.