You have seen bigger horses than his thirteen and a half, perhaps fourteen hands, his nine hundred pounds. You have seen handsomer profiles than this… - Arnold Hano

In that one moment, during an era in which sluggers threatened to take over the sport, Carl Hubbell had restored to pitching its true eminence. The man with skill in his arm, courage in his heart, and craft in his brain, could still set down the brute man with the club. It meant more than a man striking out great hitters; it stood for baseball's interpretation of man's growth. We have come away from men with clubs and dim brains. Hubbell's performance those five outs was baseball's way of representing all this, of representing the contest between brains and brawn. Never was brawn so thoroughly routed.

Finally Jones came in with a blinding fastball, the way Sad Sam used to throw ’em, and Clemente unloaded. The wind was blowing in from left field that day, and blowing hard. This was 1960, remember, before the fences had been moved in, and nobody was hitting home runs at Candlestick. Not Mays, not Cepeda, not anybody. Clemente’s bat hit the ball, and the result absolutely clubbed the crowd into awed silence for a long moment. Right into that wet whipping wind the ball carried. Right on through, hit 120 feet high in a long soaring majestic parabola that came down finally over 450 feet away. There is just no way of telling how far Clemente’s home run blast would have traveled had it not been for that wind. Suffice it to say partisan Giant fans suddenly broke their shell-shocked silence and let loose a gagantic roar. For two innings the stadium buzzed. For days the Giants talked about it. Even today if you slip up behind a Giant pitcher and suddenly whisper in his ear: ‘Remember the home run Clemente hit?’ he’s likely to jump as high as if he’d been caught putting spit on baseballs.

Nobody ever wrote so well so fast as Jim. One year he wrote, and we published, nine novels. It was an obsession. Back in 1941, his father had been in an asylum in Oklahoma City, begging Jim to get him out. Jim needed money to get him out, so he said to his father, "Give me a month, and I'll raise the money." His father brightened, because Jim never went back on his word. Jim took a bus to New York City and went door to door to the publishing houses, asking for money for a hotel room, a rented typewriter and meals so he could write a novel. Finally, at Modern Age, they took a chance, and in 10 days he wrote a novel. But things being what they are in publishing, it was a month plus one day before Jim got his advance. The same day, a telegram arrived. His father had committed suicide, ripping the excelsior out of his mattress and stuffing it down his throat. When Jim would drink he would sometimes cry and say, "Why couldn't he have waited another day? Didn't he trust me?"