Every time I see Devers, or Story, or Big Papi, or Manny hit the ball out of the park, I am reminded that Ted Williams reckoned it was the most difficult skill in sports. (Even Bob Dylan knew it was beyond him. “I wish I could hit a 100mph fastball” he said, “but you have to stick to what you know”.)

I never saw Williams play. I never read his book The Science of Hitting. In fact, I had never heard of him until I read a piece in the New Yorker by John Updike, entitled Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu, and I only read that because it was by John Updike, whose laconic prose style and risqué story-telling was a phase I was going through back in the '60s.

Typically, Updike's essay on the final appearance of Ted Williams, the Kid, was more about his relationship with his current mistress, who had cancelled a tryst that afternoon and Updike had sought solace at Fenway Park, where he was privileged to see Williams sign off with a home run, hit into the Sox bullpen in right centre field.

It was the last of 521 homers that he hit for the Red Sox in a career which, interrupted by World War 11 and the  Korean War, spanned 21 years, of which nearly five were on military service. A new book, by Bill Nowlin, celebrates not all of them but those which were 'winning' HRs. By the criteria applied by Nowlin, there were 110 of them. His final hit, in his final game, was a deep drive to right field on a pitch by Jack Fisher. There were only 10,000 fans in the park, but they gave him a two minute ovation.

Williams being Williams, with a famously ambivalent relationship with what became the Red Sox Nation, he did not emerge from the dugout to tip his cap. As Updike said, “Gods do not answer letters.”

Bill Nowlin is no John Updike. But he has written half a dozen or so books about The Kid and more about the Sox. He was also the co-founder of Rounder Records, specialists in country and bluegrass music and released the first Alison Kraus album as well as re-releases of recordings by the Carter Family, Jelly Roll Morton, Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie.

His thoroughness is awesome. His prose style less so, but that's because he is dealing in facts. Facts - and stats - are what American sports writing are about, unless you are John Updike or Bernard Malamud or Philip Roth or (my favourite) Don DeLillo. And this book* - The Kid Blasts a Winner - is a winner, not least because, by definition, it concerns itself with all Ted's game-winning (or to be accurate, game-deciding) home runs.

Which, by definition, means the Sox won every game he writes about.

For me, that makes it a great read. From beginning to end.

I was lucky. From the moment this Englishman’s obsession with the Sox began,  I only had to wait just a few years for my first World Series championship. Ted Williams played in only one series, in 1946 when, injured, he was ineffectual. But his couple of decades in a Red Sox uniform were a time that I wish I had been part of.

Bill Nowlin was right there, to the extent that he once put a mitt on a Ted home run to the centre field bleachers.

What's more, I wish I had divided my time between Fenway and the recording studio in which Alison Krauss was singing. Bill Nowlin did.

So, maybe, I wish I was Bill Nowlin. But you have to stick to what you know.

* I am grateful to Summer Game Books for my pre-publication opportunity to read this book. I loved it.

Today from the everysmith vaults:​ In the early years of this century, Phil Lesh put together a quintet which took improvisation to new levels. This morning, I am attempting (again) to get to the heart of this extraordinary stuff.

“History doesn’t repeat itself; but it often rhymes.” This take on Marx’s famous dictum, in 18 Brumaire, that history repeats itself - the first time as a tragedy, the second time as a farce - is widely attributed to Mark Twain, although it was in fact coined by the psychoanalyst Theodor Reik. Both the Marx and Reik quotes occurred to me yesterday, appropriately May Day.

I was listening to Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast. After nine of them, including the English, the American, the French, the Haitian, the July, the 1848, the Commune, and the Mexican revolutions, Mike finally arrived at the Russian Revolution back in May 2019 and is still going strong.

I am always a few episodes behind, so I was listening to #10.94 which was concerned, inter alia, with the 10th Party Congress in 1921 and, in particular, the response of Lenin and Trotsky to the criticism by the Workers’ Opposition and the Democratic Centralists of the Communist Party leadership.

Their response was to accuse the critical organisations of factionalism. Apologies to you Trots out there, but Trotsky was the strongest and most vicious in his condemnation of the WO demands: How could the party which was “the political manifestation of the industrial proletariat” betray the industrial proletariat? To claim this, was to deny both the vanguard role of the party and, thus, the revolution itself.

Of course, in its criticism of the top-down hegemony of party bureaucrats, it was doing no such thing. But Lenin (and Trotsky) were more concerned by the fact that the opposition was organised. The party had already taken over the unions, on the basis that the workers needed no protection from an employer which was their own state. Now, by banning factions, it was extending this theoretical concept to anyone with concerns or criticisms of the party. Especially if they expressed them in meetings or published them in newspapers and periodicals.

But ban them they did. No manifestations of factionalism of any sort would be tolerated, and failure to comply with this resolution “is to entail unconditional and immediate expulsion from the party”. And the power to define factionalism and expel members?

The Central Committee.

This resolution, On Party Unity, is crucial to the future of the party and the country. Because one man, Stalin, saw the opportunity to dictate what was right, what was wrong, who was in and who was out. And if you didn’t like it, you were guilty of factionalism and expelled.

I’m writing this on May Day, less than a month since a Jewish comrade and friend in my constituency was expelled from the Labour Party for anti-semitism.

I’m cautious about drawing precise parallels. But are you concerned about the denial of free speech within the party and the diktats of Starmer and Evans? Do the recent and continuing purges in the Labour Party, aimed primarily at left-wing Jews and socialists, ring a bell?

If it does, then the bell tolls for thee.

Today from the everysmith vaults: The John Adams Violin Concerto. A recent discovery which is haunting me day and night. The recording I have is by Leila Josefowicz and the St Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Robertson. I’ll be checking out others in the weeks to come.

“Congratulations Boris. You have managed to smuggle TWO truths past the team.” The parallels between David Mitchell’s The Unbelievable Truth on Radio 4 and PMQs become clearer with each week that passes.

If you are not familiar with the programme, the idea is that contestants deliver a short essay on a given topic, the majority of which will be false but which will include random truths to be identified.

So, for example, the topic might be the Patel policy of exporting asylum seekers to Rwanda for ‘processing’. It’s a policy which has drawn criticism from labour, Lib Dems, SNP and the Church of England.

None of these organisations, however, has pointed out that Johnson was right, at least in this: that the originator of this policy was not Patel but David Blanket, the Labour Home Secretary under Tony Blair. Blanket described this policy, at the turn of the millennium, as “a 21st century innovation” to solve the “problem” of immigration.

(Johnson went on to describe Starmer as a “Corbynista in a smart Islington suit”. This may not be true now, but it was certainly true when Starmer stood for the Labour leadership. He stood on a programme which adopted the 2019 manifesto but which promised that, with his haircut and tailoring, he was more electable.)

The issue here is Labour’s complicity in the creation of an anti-immigration stance, the “hostile environment” which has empowered Patel and Johnson to put this vile and immoral strategy into practice.

I raise it not merely because I am ashamed and embarrassed by the current Labour party. I raise it because I am ashamed and embarrassed by the state of our politics in general. The government is a shambles of corruption. The opposition is fighting its own activists with more resources and vitriol than it does the government.

Which leaves us where, exactly?

We are nowhere. Nothing shall come of nothing. We are under the hegemony of a political elite which includes both “major” parties, plus the press, plus the broadcasters, plus the church, plus the global oligarchs and financial markets.

I shall work for my local MP - an honourable exception to the above - at the next election. And I will almost certainly continue to howl against the dying of the light in this blog.

But I warn you: It’s not dark yet. But it’s getting there.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Shostakovich of course - the magnificent 10th symphony performed by Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic.

“Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.” Like everyone, I am waiting. Waiting for Putin to invade the Ukraine. Waiting for the MLB lockdown to end. Waiting for the Forde Report. Waiting for the reinstatement of Corbyn. Waiting for the publication of Sue Gray’s enquiry. And waiting for the resignation of the Prime Minister.

These are merely a few of the various sources of angst which I am currently experiencing. And they are all issues over which I have no influence.

But the waiting does give us an opportunity to muse on the essence of those issues, to consider precisely why we feel so helpless: why we are denied the opportunity to act. We can think. We can feel. But what we think and feel is impotence, an inability to influence events, a lack of engagement with the processes that affect our lives.

We are not even in control of our ourselves. As Sartre says, we are ‘trapped in existence’.

Trapped in existence, Jill and I lead a moderately comfortable life: children, grandchildren, good friends, a nice house. All that good stuff.

But that does not eliminate anxiety. It merely mitigates. And I am waiting still for the freedom that Sartre promised would be the outcome of that anxiety.

True, it is about choice and the inability or unwillingness to make choices (which is, of course, in itself, a kind of choice). 

Unfortunately, choices - meaningful choices - are usually false or fraudulent. They are hostages to fortune. And those who make those choices are making the wrong ones.

Which makes me even more anxious. And even more angry.

Sorry about all this. You’ve caught me on a bad day.

Today from the everysmith vaults:​ In keeping with my mood, Shostakovich Symphony #15. Kirill Kondrashin and the Moscow Philharmonic.

We all know that, in the political world, enquiries are not launched to discover the truth; rather, the intention is to kick the can of worms down the street. Hence, for example, the lack of surprise - even lack of interest - at the recent ‘findings’ of Lord Geidt after two separate investigations. And hence the quite extraordinary delay in the completion and publication of the Forde Report into Labour shenanigans, the deadline for which passed over two years ago now.

So what can we expect from the investigation currently being undertaken by Sue Gray, a civil servant and employee of Johnson, into Johnson and his serial partying during lockdown?

Frankly, very little. For two reasons.

Firstly because the investigation was commissioned and launched in order to allow Johnson to prevaricate in parliament. We must wait for the findings he proclaims whenever a pertinent question is asked.

This is of course standard practice for all politicians and one factor in the lack of trust which would appear to be shared by the majority of the electorate.

But it is the second reason which is fundamental to our expectations, and it is essentially about marking their own homework.

Sue Gray is not independent. She is a career civil servant. She has no power to sanction anyone. Her role is tightly defined and it is to lay out the facts.

This should not take long. After all, the facts are already in the public domain and have not been denied. Indeed, Johnson has already confirmed that he attended the party on 20 May 2020. (He also spluttered that he thought it was a ‘works do’, which tells you something about his definition of work but ignorance of the law is no defence.)

No schedule has been established for this inquiry. It will take as long as it takes. And if it does its job, Johnson will not be in a hurry to draw a line under the whole sorry episode. Or episodes.

She will not be helped by the fact that staffers at No 10 have been instructed to clean up their phones (an activity with which Ms Gray is frighteningly familiar), and you can bet that Johnson’s diary will be packed with excuses for being unavailable for interview.

This shouldn’t matter. Ms Gray works in No. 10. She knows what’s going on. She is a member of the elite, part and parcel of the cabal. And the more I hear Tory MPs telling us that she is the best person for the job, the more I distrust both her and the process.

But let’s assume that her laying out out of the facts is accurate, timely and damning. Then what?

Ask Priti Patel. The person who will have to act on the findings will be Boris Johnson. And as with Patel’s bullying, he will decide to move on.

Nothing to see here. No action taken.

Today from the everysmith vaults: The death of Bernard Haitink is very sad news indeed. As he said, he suggested rather than instructed. Delving into the vault I am amazed at how many of my favourite recordings were performed under his baton. Today, it is A Sea Symphony by Vaughan Williams, with The London Philharmonic and the wondrous Felicity Lott.

PS Just as I was about to press the post button, news of yet another party at Downing Street emerges. I worked in advertising agencies in the '70s, where and when to say that a drinking culture prevailed would be an understatement. But we never had this many parties.

I had my data stolen a month ago. I had not given any information to the company from which it was stolen, a so-called ‘third party’, and I don’t even know who the third party is. Nor do I know the extent of the theft, except that it is ‘significant’ and serious enough to involve the National Crime Agency (NCA), National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Which sounds pretty serious to me.

If you are one of the (hundreds of) thousands who received the email from the Labour Party about this ‘incident’, and asked to keep it ‘confidential’, you are not necessarily a member of the Labour Party. You could have resigned, been suspended or expelled. Or - and this is very concerning - you could never have been a member of the party at all.

The fact is your data was stolen because the Labour Party was holding it; not only holding it but also sharing it with ‘third parties’. (I use the plural here because the email referred not to the the third party but a third party, from which I infer that there are more than one.)

It would appear that Labour is in clear breach of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a breach which could justify compensation.

The issue, and this is why the chances of us ever hearing the full story are minimal, is not the breach itself but Labour’s privacy policies. Actually, not the policies but a succession of actions which do not accord with the policy statement. The ICO has already found against Labour innumerable times for its actions or lack of them, notably for its failures to respond to SARs requests. (SARs are Subject Access Requests which, under GDPR Article 15, makes it compulsory for an organisation to reveal the data it holds on an individual.)

It is, I regret to conclude, yet another example of the contempt with which David Evans et al treat the membership at large. We know that the database is used primarily to troll and monitor the activities of members. We even have an ex-Israeli intelligence agent in charge of this.

The email promised to update us. Don’t hold your breath. Like the Forde Report, the issues have been kicked into touch because,  I suspect, behind the hacking ‘incident’ is a plethora of illegalities and witch-hunting which, I am afraid, is the modus operandi of the current secretariat.

Today from the everysmith vaults: As Bob moves from town to town on the current leg of the never ending tour, I am grateful for the recordings that our American bobcats and Dylanologists are sharing with the rest of us, especially the remastered shows from Bennyboy. I'm currently loving Bloomington.

In October 1818, John Keats responded to a letter from Richard Woodhouse complimenting him on a review of Endymion which had appeared in the Quarterly Review. He wrote: “As to the poetical Character itself (I mean that sort of which, if I am any thing, I am a Member; that sort distinguished from the wordsworthian or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone) it is not itself - it has no self - it is every thing and nothing - It has no character - it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated - It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion Poet." He goes on to point out that “A poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity.” He has “no self”.

The parallel is clear. John Bauldie’s posthumously published book, titled The Chameleon Poet and sub-titled Bob Dylan’s Search for Self is a tardy but nonetheless interesting contribution to the faux Dylan-Keats debate of decades ago, a debate in which I engaged at the time but always with an understanding that, although I was a lover of Keats and remain so to this day, the quarrel was of no relevance to an appreciation of either. Then, it was about defending the genius of Dylan against the snobbery of people like AS Byatt and, crucially, defending the song against the poem. It was about defining poetry.

Bob of course, Bob being Bob, he was ambivalent. “Yippee, I’m a poet and I know it” he sang, before adding (just in case he was being taken seriously) “Hope I don’t blow it!” And when asked directly if he regarded himself as a poet, he replied “I think of myself as just a song & dance man”. Michael Gray, the pioneer of Dylan studies, seized on this conceit in his seminal triptych, Song & Dance Man, the first volume of which was published as far back as 1972 and in which I am not aware of any mention of John Keats. 

According to Bill Allison’s excellent (and for me, informative) introduction to The Chameleon Poet, Michael’s first volume inspired Bauldie. Reading it, he realised he wanted to be more of a Dylanologist than a Bobcat (although he is credited with the coinage of the latter term, which refers to those who follow the shows as compared with the desk-bound scholars). Certainly, Bauldie makes no reference to shows, to music, to performances. His emphasis is almost exclusively on textual analysis, including the movies and - importantly - Bob’s writings on the back cover of the sleeves. It's practical criticism. Throw in his degree in English and his experience as a teacher of English, and you have the nub of Bauldie’s approach.

It is, in many ways, a schoolmasterly book. You see how I started this piece talking about Keats and only by association moved onto Bob himself? That’s a trick Bauldie uses in this book as he must have done many times in classrooms as both student and teacher. One chapter, ostensibly concerned with Bob’s early work, begins with a lengthy exegesis of King Lear. Others reference Hesse, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Jung. Even if one didn’t know about Bauldie’s untimely death, one could make an informed guess at the date of the manuscript of this book.

Bauldie was older than me. By five days. We were both born in the last days of the summer holidays in 1949. We both combined our love of Bob with support for under-performing football teams. His interests were my interests at that time and the compare-and-contrast methodology with which we had been imbued is a way of thinking and explaining adopted by all of us in and out of the classroom.

He is not as meticulous in his readings as Michael Gray, who, in turn, is not as meticulous as Christopher Ricks. But who is? Nevertheless, there are some keen insights here. He is particularly good on Planet Waves and John Wesley Harding. And, passim, he is excellent in his distinguishing of the noumenal Bob from the phenomenal, the inner from the outer, the masked and anonymous from the simple and direct.

I wish I had known John Bauldie. But I know him well enough now through this book. And I am reminded of one of my favourite Bob stories.

“You don’t know me, but I know you” said a fan, outside a show.

“Let’s keep it that way” said Bob.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Bob’s first show back on the road, in Milwaukee, on Tuesday night. A wonderful show, with eight songs from Rough & Rowdy Ways and the sound of Shadow Kingdom. It’s only been in the vault for 48 hours but it is currently playing for the fourth time around.

I am writing this on ‘short rest’. A wild card game against the Yankees followed by a fantastic and ultimately successful series against the Rays have conspired to deprive me of sleep and contribute major stress to my extended waking hours. But the Sox are now champions of the ALE and there are two sleeps available before the first of the ALCS against either the White Sox or the Astros. There is a sense in this solitary part of the Red Sox Nation that the Sox are on a roll.

Being a Sox fan in Europe means long nights. Games mostly start after midnight, and even the game 3 afternoon start at Fenway (9pm BST) went to extra innings and continued into the early hours. But during the day and early evening, normal life continues and has its own highlights.

One such took place last Friday, the anniversary of my father’s death. After 18 months or so, the International String Quartet series returned to Leamington, featuring the Sacconi Quartet. I had missed their previous performance at the Pump Rooms, a decade ago, so was keen to be right upfront for their return. In a heavily and professionally Covid-proofed auditorium, I managed to reserve Seat B1.

In fact, the attraction was not solely the Sacconi, nor even the return of live chamber music to my neck of the woods; it was the programme.

The Sacconi were to play (after the obligatory Haydn warm-up) the eighth of Shostakovich’s quartets and to devote the second half of the concert to the String Quartet In C# minor, Opus 131 by Beethoven.

The latter has been one of my favourite pieces of music. I have a dozen or more versions of it at home and one of them will doubtless figure in my list of Desert Island Discs. The Sacconi did it more than justice: they are are a powerful, muscular band and they brought out the grandeur of the fugue, the joy (in the Allegro) and passion throughout, whilst addressing the delicacy and profundity of the Adagio. It is a heavy responsibility to play this masterwork. The Sacconi took it on and triumphed.

But by then, we knew they would. We had already heard the Shostakovich 8th, his 1960 response to a visit to a bombed-out Dresden.

I mentioned that it was the anniversary of my father’s death because he was a bomber pilot in the RAF during the war. And a distinguished one, with a DFC and AFC to prove the point.

I do not know whether he was involved in those controversial raids in mid-February 1945, during which the city was systematically destroyed and more than 30,000 civilians are believed to have died. (Some estimates place it over 200,000.) At this stage of the war, the only ‘civilians’ would have been the elderly and sick, women and children.

It has been described as a war crime, principally by those of my political persuasion. But it is significant that Churchill, in his massive 6 volume history of the war, makes no mention of the Dresden destruction.

As I say, I have no idea if my father was one of those involved. He never spoke of it, but then he never spoke of any of his wartime experiences.

But I know enough of him to know that he would have listened to the Shostakovich quartet and, as did Shostakovich himself when it was played to him by the Borodin, “buried his head in his hands and wept”.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Away from performances and mlb.tv, I am listening to English music. Warlock, Delius, Elgar and - currently - Vaughan Williams. It's A Sea Symphony​ playing right now. 

I haven’t done a word count, but the press reckons that it is 12500 or perhaps 14000 words long. Seems longer. When I embarked on reading it, I was looking to take issue with his policies. Unfortunately, I can’t do that, because there are none. Or, at least, none proposed or even mentioned here.


I didn’t vote for Starmer, but I thought about it. I have his Ten Pledges on my notice board and, when they were published, each one made me more open to his candidacy and potential leadership. It seemed I was not alone. Many of those who had voted twice for Jeremy Corbyn were attracted by Starmer’s claim that he would not change track, and that the 2017 Labour manifesto was the basis of the party in the future.


In my case, I allowed my heart to overcome my head. I voted for Rebecca Long-Bailey. But when the results came in, I nevertheless believed that Starmer would be a good leader of the party, perhaps in the manner of John Smith, but certainly not like Tony Blair, under whose aegis the party lost my support (though not my membership subs).


Since Starmer’s election, a great deal has happened to cause concern amongst those of my Labour persuasion. I won’t list them because most of you will be aware of the purge of the left, the expulsion and suspension of Jewish socialists, the lack of opposition to Johnson, and of course the current proposals to change the one-member-one-vote system within the party.


But this much-vaunted Fabian leaflet - an ‘essay’ apparently, but not even a good try - was Starmer’s opportunity to show himself as a positive, forward-looking leader: someone who had a vision which was not confined to purging opponents, but concerned itself with ideas, practicality, policy.


I have now read it. Not The Guardian’s summary. I have read it all, word by word, cliché by cliché, banality after banality.


It is heart-breaking. Not merely because of the style - where is that forensic approach? Where is that legal mind at work? Where are the strong socialist principles? Where, indeed, are any principles at all?


Where, in short, is the leadership?


Perhaps the claim to leadership is to be found here ….

Or perhaps not.

Today from the everysmith vaults: I have of course been listening to Volume 16 of The Bootleg Series, and tbh, one needs to get to the last two tracks of the fifth and final CD to listen to anything new and/or worthy of the man. I have also been listening to a soundtrack of Shadow Kingdom, which is masterful. But I have mostly been listening to James Knight's poignantl and cathartic suite, Close. Quite beautiful.

Bob's birthday took about three weeks. It included much preliminary listening to albums and shows as well as tuning in to Radio 4 which ran a number of Bob-related broadcasts which exceeded my expectations; notably the Front Row conversation and the play Dinner with Dylan.
 
I commend both to you. But the celebrations really began with the arrival – by courier! – of Michael Gray’s Outtakes on Bob Dylan (#13 since you ask).
 
Anyone with even a passing interest in the extraordinary genius of Bob Dylan will be aware of the commentary, critiques and criticism provided by Michael Gray. We have all taken from our shelves our copy of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia to confirm a fact or check a reference and found ourselves, hours later, moving seamlessly from one entry to another.
 
Outtakes on Bob Dylan is different from the encyclopedia and from Song & Dance Man. It is more personal, more subjective. And because the selected pieces were written in real time, more alive and immediate, less retrospective.
 
The book begins in 1966 and subsequently covers if not every year, certainly every period of Bob. Part of my enjoyment is the realisation that Michael and I attended many of the same shows, though not always coming to similar judgements. One show on which we agreed was Bob’s dreadful performance on the first night in Birmingham (UK) with Tom Petty in 1987. It is the only Bob show I have ever left early, out of embarrassment, and the story goes that, as Bob started a new song, one Heartbreaker asked Petty what it was. “Dunno, but it’s in D” said Petty. Michael is right that the next two nights were a transformation. But that’s Bob being Bob and there are countless examples in Outtakes, because Michael is always honest. He is, primarily, a fan but his academic rigour is never relaxed. He will never, as I do, look to justify or praise when there is no reason.
 
Many of the selected pieces are familiar, but even I cannot keep up with every item of Dylanology in every periodical. So many are new to me, including of course the recently written essay on Rough & Rowdy Ways.
 
This is a fine piece of work, worthy of the exhortation given to Michael by an editor many years ago that he “should do an FR Leavis on Dylan”. Spoiler alert: Rough & Rowdy Ways “isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s a work of depth, warm resonance, invention and generosity.”
 
One final recommendation: the penultimate essay is a moving tribute to Bob Dylan 8-for-43 Willis. I met Bob Willis, a long-standing friend of Michael, twice only. The first time was at a Bob concert (one of the Birmingham shows in ’87)when we stood at adjacent urinals before the show and talked cricket; the second was at Lord’s when we talked about the number of bootlegs we each possessed.
 
That Michael who watches tennis in the summer was a friend of an English cricket legend is a measure of the man. And this obituary a measure of his writing.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: The three shows in Birmingham from 1987. Jeez, that first night was awful.