"If accident is the greatest of all inventors, then fate did us all a solid in making Bob Lipsyte a sportswriter. By turns critical and self-critical, restless and rigorous, vigilant and clear-eyed, An Accidental Sportswriter documents fifty years of upheaval in the games we play and how we view them. With his original and iconoclastic voice, Lipsyte compels us to become not just fans but fans of conscience." - Jane Leavy , author of The Last Boy and Sandy Koufax "Robert Lipsyte taught me what it meant to truly write about sports without the hyped-up regurgitation. His memoir, An Accidental Sportswriter, is his best work yet--graceful, moving without melodrama, funny, anecdotal, and superbly intelligent. He is still the best there is." - Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights and Three Nights in August "Bob Lipsyte became the most respected sportswriter in America without being a sports fan-which of course is why he was so good. Now he has written about what that world is really like, a Ball Four of sports coverage.
" - Richard Reeves, author of Daring Young Men and President Reagan "Jock Culture glorifies the young, the strong and the beautiful, and Lipsyte, the would-be Chekhov, gets the tragic implications. That's why his columns, and this marvelous memoir, 'An Accidental Sportswriter,' are so affecting." - Ann Levin, Associated Press "An Accidental Sportswriter reminds us why Howard Cosell once crowned Lipsyte 'the greatest sportswriter of our time.' He renders many affecting portraits, notably of his father, and proffers much wisdom, laced with cynicism, to aspiring sportswriters." - Boston Globe "An Accidental Sportswriter is irresistibly readable. I flew through the 244-page book in one night. It made me laugh, cry and cheer, while taking me through some of the biggest moments in sports. I couldn't put it down.
True to form, Lipsyte is brutally honest and controversial. But he's also poignant, both about himself and the sports icons he covered. His revelations about his encounters with Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Billy Jean King, Ali, Greg Louganis and Lance Armstrong kept me wanting more. Yet they are tempered with humor.But I never read Lipsyte as a great sportswriter. Sportswriters cover what goes on between the lines. Lipsyte didn't care much about that. He lived outside the lines, where the questions and stories that matter more reside.
That's where he had the homefield advantage over other scribes. His irreverent questions and bold stories forced us all to reexamine the way we look at sports and life. His new book does the same thing, only on a much grander scale." - si.com "A likable new memoir. [Lipsyte] is astute in assessing the changing relationship between sportswriters and athletes" - New York Times Book Review "Lipsyte's achievement--much harder than it looks --is to have remained an outsider among insiders. All that time was invested -- and the dividend is a sportswriter's memoir different from all the rest." - Bloomberg News.