News
Sports Night: Talkin’ Baseball
Moderated by Tim Wendel (Summer of '68: The Season That Changed Baseball and America Forever), four writers talk about their lives in and around sports: Frank Deford (Over Time: My Life As A Sportswriter), John Grisham (Calico Joe), Jane Leavy (The Last Boy: Mickey...
On the Role of the Biographer
Read my comments in the AP's look at the role of the biographer in light of Petraeus affair: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/petraeus-affair-and-role-biographers
Koufax and Last Boy Make NY Times’ Reading List for Opening Week
John Williams asks books and sports staff members of the Times to share their favorite baseball books, fiction and nonfiction. Tyler Kepner lists Sandy Koufax and The Last Boy as masterpieces of their genre.
Bill Simmons Report: Interview with Jane Leavy
Grantland contributor Jane Leavy spent the past decade writing sports biographies about Sandy Koufax and Mickey Mantle (recently released in paperback). We talked about Koufax and Mantle, Jane's experiences in being part of the first wave of female sports reporters,...
New York Times: No True Sense of History Without a Sense of Place
By JANE LEAVY | New York Times | October 22, 2011 Among the games people play, baseball is distinguished by the preservation of landmark numbers — 56, .367, 2,632, 4,256. But Major League Baseball does precious little to preserve the places where the game once...
Jeff Garlin is reading SANDY KOUFAX
Curb Your Enthusiasm's Jeff Garlin has Sandy Koufax in his library: I'm a Chicago Cubs fan — I was born there — and the framing of this book is a perfect game he pitched against the Cubs in Dodger Stadium. I loved Sandy Koufax. In a world where athletes have so little...
Squeeze Play Chosen as One of Best in Baseball Fiction
In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Allen Barra selects Squeeze Play as one of the five best novels that "take fiction out to the ballgame": A.B. Berkowitz—the "A" is for Ariadne—writes for the mythical Washington Tribune and covers the team that would...
Summer is Made for Books (including The Last Boy)
Steve Buckley of the Boston Herald shares his list of summer reads. His five picks include The Last Boyi: Virtually everyone who follows baseball (and a lot of people who don't) has taken a course in Mickey Mantle 101: truly great baseball player, beset with...
The Last Boy in the Christian Science Monitor
The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood This gripping tale of the American legend blends myth and fact to create a nuanced portrait of The Mick Ross Atkin | Christian Science Monitor | July 2, 2011 One wouldn't think that in the heart of Red...
Grantland: One Round
One Round He was rapidly losing his eyesight — and then he took up golf. Jane Leavy celebrates her father, and the only nine holes he ever played. GRANTLAND | JUNE 17, 2011 When my father realized he was going blind he took up golf. Empirical evidence of his loss of...