Louisa Thomas on John Updike's "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu"

The original idea was an assignation. On a dreary Wednesday in September, 1960, John Updike, "falling in love, away from marriage," took a taxi to see his paramour.

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But, he later wrote, she didn't answer his knock, and so he went to a ballgame at Fenway Park for his last chance to see the Red Sox outfielder Ted Williams, who was about to retire. For a few dollars, he got a seat behind third base.

He spent the following five days writing about what happened next: Williams, after enduring a sorry little ceremony to say goodbye, came to bat for the last time, in the bottom of the eighth inning, and hit a home run—low, linear, perfect. "It was in the books while it was still in the sky," Updike wrote, and it is still in the sky, sixty-five years later, because of the arresting vividness of his depiction. Updike captured not only the ball’s trajectory and its monumental effect but also the moment’s mix of jubilation and relief.

No one should have anticipated what Williams had done. He was forty-two; the Red Sox were bad; the air was heavy with impending rain; and the sky was so dark that the stadium lights had to be turned on—“always a wan sight in the daytime, like the burning headlights of a funeral procession.” But it was Updike’s insight to see that everyone