Billy Crudup, Zachary Levi and Tony Shalhoub Will Lead Reading of PAFCO AT THE WALL

Billy Crudup, Zachary Levi and Tony Shalhoub present a dramatic reading of Don DeLillo's classic baseball novella Pafko at the Wall-a transcendent account of one of the iconic events of the twentieth century and a masterpiece of American sportswriting.

For tickets and information, visit https://www.92y.org/event/don-delilo-s-pafko-at-the-wall.

This literary performance coincides with the date-October 3, 1951-on which DeLillo set Pafko. It reimagines an unforgettable moment in baseball history-Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard 'Round the World"-and reassembles in fiction the larger-than-life characters gathered at the Polo Grounds that day to see the New York Giants beat the Brooklyn Dodgers to win the pennant: Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays down on the field; Frank Sinatra, Toots Shor and Jackie Gleason with J. Edgar Hoover in box seats; and announcer Russ Hodges calling the action in the broadcast booth.

DeLillo collaborated on the stage adaptation and will attend the performance.

"All I wanted to do was write a fictional account of this ballgame," DeLillo told The New Yorker's David Remnick. Pafko is "written with a sort of super-omniscience. There are sentences that may begin in one part of the ballpark and end in another. They travel from one person's mind to another. I did it largely because it was pleasurable. It was baseball itself that provided a kind of freedom."

Originally published in Harper's magazine in October 1992, Pafko was published as the opening of DeLillo's novel Underworld in 1997, then released as a stand-alone novella in 2001-the 50th anniversary of Thomson's "Shot."