An Accidental Sportswriter
A Memoir
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Celebrated sports journalist Robert Lipsyte—the New York Times’ longtime lead sports columnist—mines pure gold from his long and very eventful career to bring readers a memoir like no other. An enthralling book, as much about personal relationships and the culture of sports as the athletes and teams themselves, An Accidental Sportswriter interweaves stories from Lipsyte’s life and the events he covered to explore the connections between the games we play and the lives we lead. Robert Lipsyte has been there—from the Mets’ first Spring Training to the fight that made Muhammad Ali an international icon to the current steroids scandals that rewired our view of sports—and in An Accidental Sportswriter he offers a fresh and refreshing view of the world of professional athletes as seen through the eyes of a journalist who always managed to remain independent of our jock-obsessed culture.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The first time lifelong New Yorker Lipsyte visited Yankee Stadium as a boy in 1951, he was disappointed, finding it to be "less grand than I imagined." His critical eye that rejects the breathless awe of athletes and their environs would later set him apart from most sportswriters, a fraternity he describes as "lodge brothers" guilty of "godding up" sports figures in the masculine world of "Jock Culture." A longtime sports columnist for the New York Times, Lipsyte begins his story in Queens with his grade school victimization by bullies, one of whom he gloriously overcomes. After college, the need for a summer job landed the unathletic, aspiring writer with little interest in sports on the Times sports desk, a job that allowed him to shadow Gay Talese and later cover the emergence of Muhammad Ali, a story that became his "magic carpet ride." Lipsyte writes of his admiration for Ali, Howard Cosell, Billie Jean King, and comedian/activist Dick Gregory; he also explores his feelings about others that were more complicated, notably Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio. A defensive thread of bitterness runs through his memoir, most pointedly aimed at Bob Costas, the broadcaster who criticized his "contrarian" approach to sports and whom Lipsyte depicts as walking the line "between journalist and shill." Lipsyte's memoir is at its best when revealing personal anecdotes of his life and the stories he covered, including his surprising late-in-life fascination with NASCAR and a touching concluding chapter about his relationship with his father.
