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Over time my life as a sportswriter

This book is as unconventional and wide-ranging as the author's remarkable career, in which he has chronicled the heroes and the characters of just about every sport in nearly every medium. He joined Sports Illustrated in 1962, fresh out of Princeton. They called him "the Kid," and he made his reput...

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Main Author: Deford, Frank
Format: Books Print Book
Language:English
Published: New York, NY : Atlantic Monthly Press, c2012.
Edition:1st ed.
Subjects:
Deford, Frank.
Sportswriters > United States > Biography.
Sports journalism > United States.
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Summary:This book is as unconventional and wide-ranging as the author's remarkable career, in which he has chronicled the heroes and the characters of just about every sport in nearly every medium. He joined Sports Illustrated in 1962, fresh out of Princeton. They called him "the Kid," and he made his reputation with dumb luck discovering fellow Princetonian Bill Bradley and a Canadian teenager named Bobby Orr. These were the Mad Men-like 1960s, and he recounts not just the expense-account shenanigans and the antiquated racial and sexual mores, but the professional camaraderie and the friendships with athletes and coaches during the "bush" years of the early NBA and the twilight of "shamateur tennis." In 1990, he was editor in chief of The National Sports Daily, one of the most ambitious projects in the history of American print journalism. Backed by eccentric Mexican billionaire Emilio "El Tigre" Azcarraga, The National made history and lost $150 million in less than two years. Yet the author endured: writing ten novels, winning a Peabody, an Emmy (not to mention his stint as a fabled Lite Beer All-Star), and recently he read his fifteenth-hundred commentary on NPR's Morning Edition, which reaches millions of listeners. This book is packed with people and stories, including the chapters on his visit to apartheid South Africa with Arthur Ashe, and his friend's brave and tragic death. Interwoven through his personal history, he traces the entire arc of American sportswriting, from the lurid early days of the Police Gazette, through sportswriters Grantland Rice and Red Smith, and on up to ESPN.
Physical Description:354 p., [16] p. of plates : ill., ports. ; 24 cm.
ISBN:9780802120151 (hardcover) :
0802120156 (hardcover)
Author Notes:Benjamin Franklin Deford III was born in Baltimore, Maryland on December 16, 1938. He graduated from Princeton University in 1962. He began his career at Sports Illustrated as a researcher. He wrote for Sports Illustrated for more than 30 years, appeared on HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel for 22 years, and gave 1,656 weekly commentaries for NPR's Morning Edition. He was a six-time Sportswriter of the Year, a National Magazine Award recipient, a member of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame, and the first sportswriter to be given a National Humanities Medal. He wrote both fiction and nonfiction books including two memoirs entitled Alex: The Life of a Child and Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter. He died on May 28, 2017 at the age of 78.

(Bowker Author Biography)

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