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<\/a>Review of Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: <\/span>John Updike on Ted Williams<\/em> (Library of America, cloth, 64pp., $15)<\/p>\nUpdike lovers will want to add this book to their collections for the sentimental value alone. Updike was working on this project in the months before he died, and a new two-and-a-half page preface is dated January 2009. Plus, the jacket was designed by none other than Chip Kidd, who crafted many a book cover for Updike\u2019s Knopf releases. The Library of America has produced a handsome book, one of which Updike would have approved\u2014and probably did <\/em>approve.<\/p>\n Open the covers and the first thing you appreciate is that the inside boards and endsheets are printed with blown-up typescripts of Updike\u2019s original first and last pages of \u201cHub Fans.\u201d <\/span>Though \u201cHub Fans\u201d was published in Assorted Prose<\/em>, \u201cTed Williams\u201d in Odd Jobs<\/em>, and \u201cThe Batter Who Mattered\u201d in Due Considerations<\/em>, it\u2019s nice to have all of what Updike had to say about one of his heroes in a single volume\u2014especially since the preface is new and he \u201cabridged, conflated, and updated\u201d the Williams\u2019 mid-life sketch and obituary.<\/p>\n In the new preface, Updike calls \u201cHub Fans\u201d a \u201cfive days\u2019 labor of love\u201d and admits that Roger Angell is \u201ca baseball freak where I was just a Williams freak.\u201d In \u201cHub Fans\u201d Updike had praised Williams\u2019 \u201crigorous pride of craftsmanship,\u201d and in this new preface he talks about how he had been \u201cdrawing sustenance and cheer from Williams\u2019 presence on the horizon.”<\/p>\n The back cover of the dust jacket lists \u201cpraise through the decades for \u2018Hub Fans,\u2019\u201d and the praise is dizzying. \u201cThe most celebrated baseball essay ever,\u201d says Roger Angell, who knows a thing or two about baseball. \u201cThe greatest writer, in the greatest ballpark, on the greatest hitter who ever lived,\u201d says Boston Globe<\/em> sports columnist\u00a0Dan Shaughnessy. \u201cNo sportswriter ever wrote anything better,\u201d Garrison Keillor writes. \u201cThe piece that changed the way the sport is written. Updike made baseball the lyricist\u2019s game.\u201d But the biggest compliment came from Williams himself. Updike writes in the preface that Williams, through an agent, invited him to write Williams\u2019 biography. And knowing how Updike felt about biographies makes that revelation all the more fun.<\/p>\n Highly recommended <\/em>(reviewed by James Plath)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Review of Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted Williams (Library of America, cloth, 64pp., $15) Updike lovers will want to add this book to their collections for the sentimental value alone. Updike was working on this project … Continue reading