Summer Reading, Summer Lists V
Noted Sports write Frank Deford died on May 28th (his NPR obituary is here). He had a long and extraordinary prolific career writing about sports, with numerous books to his credit published over a forty some odd year span, including titles such as Cut ‘n Run, and The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball. He was also a commentator for NPR’s radio show, Morning Edition, and position he held for thirty three years. NPR’s Tanya Ballad Brown undertook the herculean task of going back through his commentaries and selected an representative group. The results of her work are here, “The ‘Best Of’ Frank Deford, According To Frank Deford.” In honor of Deford’s life and work we’ll turn to this list of radio pieces as this installment of our summer “reading” list; it’s well worth a moment to listen to them, sports writing is much the poorer without him.