Sunny Jim

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by Breslin, Jimmy;


  7 Omaha— Smokey Saunders up— winner of 1935 Kentucky Derby (International News Photo, Inc.)

  8 Mr. Fitz, William Woodward, Sr., and William Woodward, Jr. (Turf Fix)

  9 Nashua and Swaps—right after the start of the match race at Chicago, August 1955

  10 Mr. Fitz and Nashua (1956)

  11 Dark Secret at the finish of the Jockey Club Gold Cup Race at Belmont

  12 Mr. Fitz and Eddie Arcaro (1961)

  13 The famous distance horse Diavolo trained by Mr. Fitz winning the Tremont Stakes at Aqueduct (1927)

  14 Mr. Fitz and Johnny Longden (1961) (Mike Sirico)

  15 A photograph of a painting of Sunny Jim done from life at Saratoga in 1960 by Robert Roche. Courtesy of the New York Racing Association.

  16 Mr. Fitz watching the post parade at Aqueduct (1960) (New York Times)

  17 Mr. Fitz watching the races at Hialeah (Wide World Photos)

  18 Mr. Fitz in the doorway of his Barn 17 at Belmont Race Track (UPI photo by Joel Schrank)

  “You see,” this old man tells you, “you’ve got to think of the other fella. Give him the best of it all the time. Maybe there’s reasons why people do things. Give them the edge. Then you’ll never have to go around not liking anybody.”

  A Biography of Jimmy Breslin

  Jimmy Breslin (1928–2017) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and one of the most prominent columnists in the United States. Known for his straightforward reporting style that relates major news to the common man, Breslin published more than a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction, in addition to writing columns for newspapers such as the New York Daily News and Newsday.

  Born in Queens, New York, Breslin began his long newsroom career in the 1940s, lying about his age to get a job as a copyboy at the Long Island Press. He got his first column in 1963, at the New York Herald Tribune, where he won national attention by covering John F. Kennedy’s assassination from the emergency room in the Dallas Hospital and, later, from the point of view of the President’s gravedigger at Arlington Cemetery. He also provided significant coverage of the civil rights turmoil raging in the South, and was an early opponent of the Vietnam War.

  In 1969, Breslin ran for city council president on Norman Mailer’s mayoral ticket. The two campaigned on a platform arguing for statehood for New York City and for banning private cars in Manhattan, among other issues. Breslin placed fifth in the primary election, garnering eleven percent of the vote. He later quipped that he was “mortified to have taken part in a process that required bars to be closed,” referring to a law in place at the time that prohibited the sale of liquor on election days.

  In the early 1970s, Breslin retired from newspaper journalism to write books, beginning with The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight (1970), a national bestseller that was adapted into a 1971 film starring Robert De Niro and Jerry Orbach. By this time Breslin had also published Sunny Jim (1962), about legendary racehorse trainer Jim Fitzsimmons, and Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? (1963), about the disastrous first season of the New York Mets baseball team. He also wrote How the Good Guys Finally Won (1976), about the Watergate Scandal and Nixon’s subsequent impeachment, a prevalent topic for him in the early 1970s.

  Breslin returned to column-writing later in the decade, taking jobs first at the New York Daily News, then at Newsday. As always, he covered the city by focusing on ordinary people as well as larger-than-life personalities. His intimate knowledge of cops, Mafia dons, and petty thieves provided fodder for his columns. In the late 1970s, his profile was so high that Son of Sam killer David Berkowitz sent him letters, to boast about and publicize his crimes.

  Known for being one of the best-informed journalists in the city, Breslin’s years of insightful reporting won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1986, awarded for “columns which consistently champion ordinary citizens.” Among the work cited when he received the Pulitzer were his early columns on the victims of AIDS and his exposé on the stun-gun torture of a suspected drug dealer by police in Queens. Although he stopped writing his weekly column for Newsday in 2004, Breslin continued writing books, producing nearly two dozen throughout his life. These include collections of his best columns titled The World of Jimmy Breslin (1969) and The World According to Jimmy Breslin (1988). He passed away in 2017 at the age of eighty-eight.

  Breslin as a young man with his sister Diedre.

  Breslin writing at home in Forest Hills, Queens.

  Breslin chats with Robert F. Kennedy, who was campaigning in Los Angeles during the 1968 presidential race.

  Breslin (right) and columnist Red Smith both writing for the New York Herald Tribune during the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968.

  Breslin in Ireland in 1971, while writing World Without End, Amen.

  Breslin with Bella Abzug, a New York congresswoman and social activist.

  Letters from David Berkowitz, a.k.a. Son of Sam, delivered to Breslin at the New York Daily News offices. Son of Sam sent letters to Breslin during his killing spree in New York City in the summer of 1977. These letters were later used in the Spike Lee film Summer of Sam (2008).

  Breslin with grandson Dillon Breslin in June 1980.

  Breslin in the New York Daily News offices with publisher Jim Hogue (left) and editor Gil Spencer (right) after the announcement of the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1986.

  Breslin (far left) with the crew of his television show, Jimmy Breslin’s People, and Speaker of the House of Representatives Tip O'Neill (fourth from right) in 1986.

  The Breslin family in 1989.

  Breslin with columnists David Anderson (left) and Murray Kempton (right) at a book party for Damon Runyon: A Life in New York City, 1991.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1962 by Jimmy Breslin

  cover design by Mimi Bark

  978-1-4532-4531-6

  This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media

  180 Varick Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com

  JIMMY BRESLIN

  FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA

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