Lev Grossman, Time, November 8, 2004.

In 1952 a promising young pitching prospect out of Washington and Lee University showed up for a tryout with the New York Giants (the baseball Giants, that is–they hadn’t yet decamped for San Francisco). The prospect made a decent showing: three innings, three men on base, no runs scored. Good screwball, nice sinker, not much heat. “If somebody had offered me a Class D professional contract,” says the prospect–whose name was Tom Wolfe–many decades later, “I would have gladly put off writing for a couple of decades.”

But the Giants cut Wolfe after two days, and he became a giant of…

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