Beginning ~ at a Beach on Manhattan's West Side

Beginning (Preface)

"Do you want to go to the Beach today?"  My father's question did not send me scurrying for trunks and an inner tube.  In our household of non-swimmers the word "Beach" was always mentally capitalized, for it meant headier stuff than the surf, sand, and sun of more commonplace vocabularies.  My father, who was a sportswriter, was asking me to tag along on one of his professional visits to a stretch of sidewalk on Manhattan's West Side.

A Farewell to Heroes ~ by Frank Graham, Jr., 1981, autobiography, 325 pages

My book is the version originally published in 1981.  It is told from the point of view of Frank Graham, premier sportswriter for The New York Sun.  It also includes the chronicles of Frank, Jr., who picks up the narrative as he becomes a sports journalist in his own right.

Frank Graham, Sr., was a self-taught writer known for his uncanny ability to capture the high drama of a game-winning play or the color of a fight mob’s conversation in spare, straightforward prose.  As a reporter, he covered the rough-and-tumble Giants of John McGraw’s day and continued through boxing’s greatest era, spanning the reigns of Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis.

As the younger Frank tells more of the story, we see Lou Gehrig take Babe Ruth’s place as the Yankees’ star and then trace his glorious career to its tragic conclusion.  We see firsthand the legendary Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson and boxing’s brief but golden age on television in the 1950s.  The book also includes eighteen black-and-white photos between pages 152 and 153.

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