THIRTY YEARS OF BEST SPORTS STORIES
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An omnibus spanning thirty years of Best Sports Stories magazine, news-feature and news-coverage articles (and photos) -- from Red Smith's ""Gaelic Disaster"" of 1944 describing Army's gridiron rout of Notre Dame to David Klein's ""Peter Pan's Unexpected Birthday"" on the 1973 King-Riggs mismatch in the Astrodome. In addition to the customary baseball and football entries, this collection includes a number of offbeat pieces: a legendary Madison Square Garden prizefight announcer, a sexagenarian bowler, a moose hunter lost in the Canadian wilderness, and even a bit of historical research indicating that Abner Doubleday didn't invent the national pastime (the English did). Some of the fuller-bodied selections are notable -- W.C. Heinz on Rocky Marciano's effect on his hometown Brockton, Mass.; Jack Murphy's profile of ageless boxing champ Archie Moore; Edward Linn's investigation into the strange death of football's Big Daddy Lipscomb; and Gay Talese on a gracefully retired Joe DiMaggio. Overall, the copy is patently good enough to be repeated.