News
Would the Babe Still Be a Star?
Award-winning sportswriter Jane Leavy tells Smithsonian Magazine that the Bambino would be as big a personality as he was in his own time.
15 Best Books on Baseball to Read
Signature-Reads.com selected Sandy Koufax as one of the 15 books to read before the start of baseball season. They write: Koufax's name is incredibly well known, but the player is also incredibly private. Jane Leavy does all baseball-fans a service by offering this...
The Stacks Chat
Originally published in the Bronx Banter blog in 2003, this interview with Alex Belth was recently added to The Stacks Reader. Alex: Did you always want to be a sportswriter? Jane: I wanted to be a sportswriter because I wanted to be a writer, and a teacher once told...
Jane Leavy… in Her Own Words
In his 1973 book "No Cheering in the Press Box," author Jerome Holtzman chronicled the lives of the greatest sports journalists of his generation. Four decades later, students at the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism are updating the concept...
‘Frontline’ Documentary on NFL Premieres Tonight on PBS
League of Denial: The NFL's Concussions Crisis premieres tonight at 9 p.m. on PBS. The National Football League, a multibillion-dollar commercial juggernaut, presides over America's indisputable national pastime. But the NFL is under assault: thousands of former...
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...