Billy Crudup among readers for tribute to DeLillo classic

NEW YORK – One of the classic works of literary baseball writing, Don DeLillo’s “Pafko at the Wall,” will get a celebrity reading next month.

Actors Billy Crudup, Zachary Levi and Tony Shalhoub will narrate DeLillo’s celebrated fictionalization of the 1951 playoff game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, famously ending in the ninth inning with a pennant-winning home run by the Giants’ Bobby Thomson. The reading will take place Oct. 3 at Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y (www.92y.org ).

“Pafko at the Wall,” first published in Harper’s magazine in 1992, later served as the prologue for DeLillo’s post-World War II epic “Underworld,” released in 1997. The original piece was named for Dodgers outfielder Andy Pafko, who looked up helplessly at the left field wall as Thomson’s hit sailed over him.