Red Smith's writing is recognized as the best in the field. Here is a selection of his most memorable columns-175 of them, from 1941 to 1981. His prose...offers lasting lessons about matters journalistic and literary. -Robert Schmuhl, University of Notre Dame. The most admired and gifted sportswriter of his time.... Red Smith's work...tended to be the best writing in any given newspaper on any given day. -David Halberstam, New York Times Book Review

"August Adolphus Busch Jr., the new president of the Cardinals, is a chubby gentleman called Gussie, about the size of a St. Louis brewer. He has horn-rimmed glasses, a zillion dollars and an air of pleased bewilderment. He rides to the hounds and travels by bus." It's not hard to pluck a memorable passage from the sportswriting of Red Smith. In more than fifty years as a newspaperman, notably with the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Times, he earned a reputation as the best writer ever to confront the game of baseball astute, clever, witty, and stylish. In this bountiful selection of his most memorable columns 175 of them, from 1941 to 1981 baseball fans can recapture some of baseball's greatest moments and most unforgettable characters. Jackie Robinson's debut is here, and so is Hank Greenberg hitting home runs; Enos Slaughter scoring the winning run in the seventh game of the 1946 World Series; Stan Musial, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Lou Boudreau; the sly antics of Charles Dillon Stengel; Durocher's lip; Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra, and scores of others. It's a baseball feast. Readers who are not baseball fans will have to be satisfied with just wonderful writing. With 14 black-and-white photographs."

From The House that Ruth Built to the grass courts of Wimbledon, from the opening tip to the 19th hole, Red Smith always had the best seat in the house. Even when we couldn't be ther in person, Red Smith and the generation's best writers he helped inspire gave hungry fans a bird's eye view of the great moments in sports history. Here are 18 of his favorite great sports stories.