Jane Leavy's Blog, page 3

The Book of Joe podcast welcomes Jane Leavy

Hosts Joe Maddon and Tom Verducci welcome longtime sportswriter and NY Times best selling author Jane Leavy to discuss her latest book

Leavy responds to MLB Commissioner retirement, new proposal in Boston Globe

The preeminent baseball biographer's forthcoming book manages to see precisely what Manfred cannot.

WRKF Talk Louisiana: Mickey Mantle

Jane Leavy talks the life and career of Mickey Mantle on the anniversary of his death. Click here to listen

‘Make Me Commissioner’ Reviewed in ‘The Boston Globe’

Tara Sullivan wrties: “The opportunity to read Leavy’s prose about baseball is a gift to an audience already enthralled by her previous masterpieces… The personal touch makes this one different but no less impactful, infused by a love affair with the game that began from her youngest years in her New York City backyard. […] […]

Jane to be featured in Driven to Write: 45 Writers on the Motives and Mysteries of their Craft

In this book of essays, over 40 successful writers in varied fields —poetry, science, the performing and visual arts, psychoanalysis, journalism, literature and more— explore what drives them to write, and to work at their craft. In contributions arranged under three headings— “Models and Mentors,” “Urges and Traumas,” and “Evidence and Experiences”—each writer explores their […]

Why on Earth Did Boston Sell Babe Ruth to the Yankees?

Read Jane’s op-ed in the New York Times on the sale, at the end of 1919, that changed baseball — and New York City — forever: One hundred years ago on Christmas Day, typically the slowest news day of the year, George Herman Ruth Jr. knew there would be a news hole to fill. He […]

The Big Fella Now in Paperback!

And will be featured in the October 6, 2019 paperback row highlights from The New York Times: This detail-packed biography of the baseball legend recounts his eventful life and tracks the machinations behind his rise to an unprecedented kind of celebrity in the United States. Our reviewer, John Swansburg, said Leavy “captures Ruth’s outsize influence on […]

Babe Ruth’s Tampa Home Run Analyzed

On the 100th anniversary of Babe Ruth’s historic home run in Tampa, several scholars are asking if it ever went the 587 feet quoted on a billboard in the spot it supposedly landed, near the University of Tampa. If you were one of 4,300 at Plant Field on April 4, 1919, at what is now UT, you would have […]

Live with WYPR

Today, a conversation about one of the most fascinating figures, not only in baseball history, but in American history.  George Herman “Babe” Ruth, Jr. was born and raised in Baltimore,  graduated from the school of hard knocks, and evolved into the most famous man in America, whose every swing of the bat seemed to be a matter […]

This Week’s Q+A

Q&A with Jane Leavy Author and journalist Jane Leavy discusses her book, The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created, about the life and times of the legendary baseball player. Air date: January 27, 2019