"Years ago, I wrote a series of articles for my college newspaper about competing in contests for which I was comically unprepared: arm wrestling, archery, Scrabble. The compulsion to fail dramatically continued into my freelance writing career, when I finagled my way into the front corral at the Los Angeles Marathon. (I stuck with the élites for all of two hundred meters.) My inclination was Plimptonian."
"Plimpton did not invent participatory sports journalism-in 1922, the reporter Paul Gallico submitted himself to Jack Dempsey's fists-but he mastered its steady accumulation of masochistic micro-detail. His book is a brutally funny chronicle of an afternoon at Yankee Stadium-"unbelievably vast, startlingly green"-where he, a former prep-school pitcher, "built rather like a bird of the stiltlike, wader variety," threw a half inning of an exhibition game against Major League All-Stars."
A second installment of year-end reading recommendations includes a prompt to consult the magazine's annual best-titles list to expand reading piles. The selection highlights George Plimpton's Out of My League, recounting comedic, unprepared attempts at contests, including arm wrestling, archery, Scrabble, and a brief run with marathon élites. The book chronicles a half inning at Yankee Stadium, emphasizing masochistic micro-detail in participatory sports journalism and framing the experience as both brutally funny and panic-inducing. The climax places an amateur pitcher on the mound facing Willie Mays and company, culminating in a wild pitch and a hasty retreat.
Read at The New Yorker
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