Originally from Billings Montana, Patrick Sauer is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. patrickjsauer@mac.com
Althea Gibson’s legend deserves to be one of our biggest
Two new biographies capture the athletic greatness and the funny, exuberant personality of the undersung pioneering tennis champion. Her name should be on Grandstands court at the US Open. Let's make it happen, together.
Varieties of baseball: New, old and bananas
Why is baseball always in a state of crisis and what can be done? A slew of new books aim to answer that question. My Washington Post debut...
S.E. Hinton Is Tired of Talking About ‘The Outsiders.’ No One Else Is
More than half a century ago, Susie Hinton (soon to be known by her gender-neutral pen name) was a student at Will Rogers, where she received a D in creative writing because class assignments were nowhere near as important to her as working out the plot and characters of The Outsiders. The story would come to define her life—even though these days she would rather discuss just about anything else.
A Star is Weissenborn
Meet Dan Dubuque, the Montana guitar virtuoso using nature as a backdrop for beating the hell out of his unique instrument...
The Little League Team That Never Got The Chance To Play
Meet the Cannon Street All-Stars, a team you're going to love, and hate what cowardly bigots did to them.
The Legend Of Run-DMC’s Immortal “Christmas In Hollis,” As Remembered By The People Who Made It
Music
‘Twas the festive season of 2015, and my 5-year-old daughter Molly was trying to explain to me the holiday ditty all the kindergarteners were going to sing in unison at the annual concert. If memory serves, she said the song had a dog and Santa Claus and mac-and-cheese...
These Vintage Photos of Venus and Serena Williams Reveal the Truth of ‘King Richard’
A young, Black athlete in Compton was making a name for herself on the tennis court, so Lyons grabbed a 35mm camera to get some action shots for the next edition. It was as basic as sports photojournalism gets. “Where I was sent to shoot an up-and-coming tennis player was interesting because...
The Gospel of ‘Bull Durham,’ According to Ron Shelton
The director of what many consider to be the greatest baseball movie of all time reflects on the fisticuffs that took place on set, getting edit notes from Donald Trump and what Crash Davis would think about the National League now having a designated hitter
The Last Normal Day: Cancer, Covid, and Cabernet
I don’t do much personal essaying anymore, but inspired by the great “Last Normal Day” series at Luke O’Neil’s Welcome to Hell World substack (and because I couldn’t get my shit together in time to send it to him before it went on hiatus), I wrote about a decadent French dinner in Manhattan shared with my Dad, his wife Terry, and our Brooklyn Three on Tuesday March 10, 2020...
How Cameo Turned D-List Celebs Into a Monetization Machine
Get to know the personalized celebrity greeting company whose top earner is the legend Gilbert Gottfried. For the lover of Aladdin and The Aristocrats alike...
The Bitter Life Of A Shattered Jockey: A Mostly True Story
Mary Bacon lived a life nobody could imagine, nor would they want to. Truly tragically one-of-a-kind.
The McCarren Park Pool Parties: An Oral History
In August of 2017, I was swimming with my 6-year-old daughter in Brooklyn’s sparkling redo of the McCarren Park Pool, when I had a major flashback. I turned to her and attempted to explain the impossible.
“Daddy used to go to concerts here.”
It’s Tennis, Charlie Brown
In the 1970s, Peanuts went full-court into the tennis boom. Remember Molly Volley? Her former partner Snoopy does...
How Michael Keaton Became America’s Moral Compass
Michael Keaton is killing it role-after-role playing complicated American male archetypes, letting us see ourselves as we really are.
Thumbs Up: A Very American History of Hitchhiking
Ass, gas or grass, nobody reads for free.