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
At a book festival in Fort Lauderdale, I met David Eisenhower, Ike's grandson, who was promoting his book 'Going Home to Glory: A Memoir of Life with Dwight D. Eisenhower,' in which he describes attending the Yankees' 154th game in 1961. The whole family had been following Mantle and Maris chase Babe Ruth's home run record across the country.
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.
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.
I wanted it to be big, ... Not about a person or a career but about the time. ... I wanted to use a game of his (to highlight) and there's nothing quite like a perfect game.
When my father realized he was going blind, he took up golf.
There is nothing incompatible about laughter and demons, nor about athletic achievement and depression. Mike Flanagan made me laugh, too. But mostly, he made me brave.
News writing and sports writing have become synonymous. And it started with, you know, free agency, and now it's in the concussion debate.
Led by a new generation of edgy sportswriters like Lipsyte, we found new purpose in the great issues of the day - race, equal opportunity, drugs, and labor disputes. We became personality journalists, medical writers, and business reporters.
The only mystery is why we find it surprising that someone opted out, ... It makes him different.
When I explained the premise of the book -- that it wasn't going to be a quickie kiss-and-tell but a serious work where I use his life in baseball to tell a larger story ... he said he didn't have any interest in taking part,
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.
Mantle didn't want to stick out, but he did. He didn't wish to be treated as special, but he was. He was uncomfortable being the center of attention, but he was the centerfielder for the most famous franchise in sports.
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.
I finished what I was writing, pressed 'send' and thought, 'Koufax didn't pitch on Yom Kippur,' ... And I haven't worked on Yom Kippur since.