Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted Williams: A Library of America Special Publication - Hardcover

Praise through the decades for HUB FANS BID KID ADIEU
"The most celebrated baseball essay ever."
-Roger Angell

"Updike on Williams is a stirring spectacle. Nothing he wrote can top this astonishing piece."
-David Margolick

"The greatest writer, in the greatest ballpark, on the greatest hitter who ever lived."
-Dan Shaughnessy

"No sportswriter ever wrote anything better."
-Garrison Keillor

"The piece that changed the way the sport is written. Updike made baseball the lyricist's game."
-Peter Gammons

"Updike was a baseball writer only once, yet he wrote the finest baseball story I know of. He and Ted Williams shared a singular ambition: to be the best that ever played the game."
-Richard Ben Cramer

"It has the mystique."
-Ted Williams

On September 28, 1960—a day that will live forever in the hearts of fans—Red Sox slugger Ted Williams stepped up to the plate for his last at-bat in Fenway Park. Seizing the occasion, he belted a solo home run—a storybook ending to a storied career.

In the stands that afternoon was twenty-eight-year-old John Updike, inspired by the moment to make his lone venture into the field of sports reporting. More than just a matchless account of that fabled final game, Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu is a brilliant evocation of Williams’ entire tumultuous life in baseball.

Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of the dramatic exit of baseball’s greatest hitter, The Library of America presents a commemorative edition of Hub Fans, prepared by the author just months before his death. To the classic final version of the essay, long out-of-print, Updike added an autobiographical preface and a substantial new afterword.