Jane Leavy
Jane Leavy
Jane Leavyis an award-winning American former sportswriter and feature writer for the Washington Post. She is the author of the critically acclaimed 1990 comic novel Squeeze Play, which was called "the best novel ever written about baseball" by Entertainment Weekly. She also wrote a best-selling 2005 biography of Sandy Koufax. She lives in Washington, D.C. She is originally from Roslyn, New York, and graduated from Barnard College in 1974 and Columbia University School of Journalism in 1976. She has a...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth26 December 1951
CountryUnited States of America
The only mystery is why we find it surprising that someone opted out, ... It makes him different.
Babe Ruth didn't become her father until 18 months after he married her mother, Claire, on April 17, 1929, Opening Day of the baseball season. Julia was 12 years old.
The modern era of Cape Cod baseball dawned in 1963 when the league became a showcase for the collegiate elite.
Some scholars attribute the decline in nicknaming to the evolutionary process that turned folk heroes into entrepreneurs. The truth is: George Herman Ruth, the namely-est guy ever, exhausted our supply of hyperbole.
On winter Sundays when I was a child, we waited for my father to return from his tennis game with bagels and sturgeon and for my mother to object when the 1 P.M. Giants game began.
For most of my adult life, I dreaded the day I woke up and saw my mother in the mirror. It never happened. But, I had grown into my father. I shouldn't have been surprised. Everyone always said I was the son he never had.
There is no free speech in football. Information is parsed by monosyllabic head coaches, who dictate who gets to speak to whom and when.
Sports journalism is in the midst of an identity crisis so profound that we no longer know whether we're made up of one word or two.
Naming is a privilege of reason and the province of bullies. We name to tame and to maim; to honor the great, the dead, and ourselves.
Claire Hodgson, born Clara Mae Merritt, was the daughter of a prominent Georgia attorney who had once represented Ty Cobb. She was still a teenager when she married Frank Hodgson, a gentleman caller nearly twice her age.
Cape Cod baseball dates back to the time of the Civil War. A poster at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown touts a round-trip train ride from Hyannis to Sandwich on July 4, 1885 - the occasion of the 14th annual baseball game between Sandwich and Barnstable.
By the time I joined the 'Washington Post' sports staff in 1979, Red's Runyonesque notion of sports writing was obsolete.
In the spring of 1957, Mickey Mantle was the king of New York. He had the Triple Crown to prove it, having become only the 12th player in history to earn baseball's gaudiest jewel. In 1956, he had finally fulfilled the promise of his promise, batting .353, with 52 homers and 130 RBIs. Everybody loved Mickey.
In the glory days of Orioles, when I was a newbie baseball writer for the Post, the roster of talkers was as good as the everyday lineup. Singy - Ken Singleton - Flanny, and Cakes - the underwear spokesman Jim Palmer - were my go-to guys, occupying stalls along one wall of the shabby chic clubhouse.