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    Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter
    Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter
    Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter
    Ebook464 pages6 hours

    Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter

    By Frank Deford

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    A New York Times bestseller: The “entertaining” memoir by the legendary American sportswriter (Chicago Tribune).
     
    Frank Deford joined Sports Illustrated in 1962, and over the following decades became one of the most beloved figures in sports journalism—renowned for everything from his NPR commentaries to his status as a Lite Beer All Star.
     
    From the Mad Men-like days of SI in the sixties, to the early NBA, to Deford’s visit to apartheid South Africa with Arthur Ashe, Over Time is packed with intriguing people and stories. Interwoven through his personal history, Deford lovingly traces the entire arc of American sportswriting from the lurid early days of the Police Gazette, through Grantland Rice and Red Smith and on up to ESPN, in a “wildly entertaining” memoir (Booklist, starred review).
     
    “Equal doses of self-deprecating humor and anecdotal history of American sports journalism.” —Chicago Tribune
     
    “Insightful remembrances of stars like Wilt Chamberlain and Billie Jean King . . . [Deford is] sports writing’s Sinatra.” —San Francisco Chronicle
     
    “Endearing . . . imparts a sense of a life well lived and fully enjoyed.” —The New York Times
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMay 1, 2012
    ISBN9780802194565
    Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter
    Author

    Frank Deford

    Frank Deford (1938–2017) was an author, commentator, and senior contributor to Sports Illustrated. In addition, he was a correspondent for HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel and a regular Wednesday commentator for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. He won both an Emmy and a Peabody Award for his broadcasting. Deford’s 1981 novel Everybody’s All-American was named one of Sports Illustrated’s Top 25 Sports Books of All Time and was later made into a movie directed by Taylor Hackford and starring Dennis Quaid. His memoir Alex: The Life of a Child, chronicling his daughter’s life and battle with cystic fibrosis, was made into a movie starring Craig T. Nelson and Bonnie Bedelia in 1986.  In 2012 President Obama honored Deford with the National Humanities Medal for “transforming how we think about sports,” making Deford the first person primarily associated with sports to earn recognition from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was also awarded the PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sportswriting, the W.M. Kiplinger Distinguished Contributions to Journalism Award, and the Associated Press Sports Editors’ Red Smith Award, and was elected to the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters of America Hall of Fame. GQ has called him, simply, “the world’s greatest sportswriter.”  

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    Reviews for Over Time

    3.5/5

    23 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      First, in deference to one of Frank Deford's pet peeves, I have spelled his name correctly. It is not DeFord as so many people write it. Drives him nuts. I can relate; no one could pronounce or spell my maiden name either and it gets really old after a while.The subtitle of this book is My Life as a Sportswriter and I encourage you to get a copy as soon as it comes out in May. He is in my opinion one of the best writers around. People place sportswriters on a lower level than "actual writers" for some reason, but Deford is just plain great. You may have heard his pieces on NPR on your morning commute as I did for many years. If so, you know he has a somewhat jaded opinion on sports, but since he knows whereof he speaks, it is an opinion that we should take heed of.In this memoir he writes about his wife Carol, his great friendship with Arthur Ashe, the characters he's met in all his years of covering sports, self-deprecating accounts of his eventful life in sports, and other memories. I hadn't realized how much credit should be given Arthur Ashe for his work in Africa and in trying to create an equality in sports, tennis of course, but also sports in general. I also didn't realize what a great sense of humor he had or his knowledge of topics such as apartheid. As a person with COPD, I was interested to know that he has lung disease, and that he had a daughter who inherited his abnormality and died of cystic fibrosis. Later he and his wife adopted a little girl from the Philippines, a daughter they adore. He also writes wonderful stories about his son.Deford grew up in Baltimore and I loved his description of "Bawlmer, Merlin" the way it was in his childhood. In fact, I enjoyed his memories of his personal life more than his sports memories if that's possible. You also get a sense of how sportswriting has changed in Deford's lifetime, from the journalists like Grantland Rice (who, gasp, he doesn't have a lot of respect for) to the television personalities of the current scene. The sportswriters with genuine writing talent don't come any better than Frank Deford. Long may he write. I highly recommend this book.
    • 3/5
      Because I enjoy Deford's weekly commentaries on NPR's Morning Edition, I read his book to find out more about him, only to find that with Deford, what you hear is pretty much what you get. Having done hundreds of commentaries full of short-form anecdotes, Deford has written his memoirs the same way, in a few dozen short chapters each telling a little story or following a well-defined theme. You get a lot of stories about hanging out with this athlete or that, and a lot about what it was like being a sports journalist in the 50s, 60s and 70s. What you don't get are many opinions stronger than those he shares on the air, any stories he probably hasn't told before, or much emotion of any stripe. (The death of his young daughter from cystic fibrosis is passed over in a mere mention.)

      I'm good at reading between the lines, so Deford's justified outrage over racism in sports and his empathy for the particular trials that great athletes must endure for their moments of glory come through loud and clear. But I wish, as he approaches the end zone of life, he might let his guard drop a bit.
    • 4/5
      Frank Deford has long been one of my favorite writers, someone whose work I search out, be them in written or spoken form. His erudite and opinionated commentaries on the state of athletics in our society has sustained me, entertained me, as well as disturbed me.This collection of vignettes are intended to be an autobiography of sorts, they are written as if they were individual essays. Deford is opinionated, brutally honest, and comes off as a curmudgeon. I think he really enjoys the curmudgeon part, or else he wouldn't be projecting this role with such panache and joy. he takes on all comers, he talks about his start in sports journalism, his lucky breaks and he name drops like nobody's business. Many of those names take hits while many others are elevated into the Deford pantheon of all around good guys. Whether you want to believe his observations or not, the delivery is impeccable and always fascinating.The story that Deford tells is of the evolution of the mass market sports world. It is a recounted of the sports journalism genre as it evolved through the most revolutionary and some say the least beneficent era: the era that goes from the rise of the sports press to today, the social media age. Even though Deford wasn't there at the very beginning, he was an observer through rise and possible demise of the written sports presst. Deford tells the story, or actually history extremely well and does a very elegiac accounting of the history without seeming maudlin or too sentimental. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, the essays were of the perfect length for short breaks and interesting enough for the reader to recall the thread when he or she returns to the book.
    • 2/5
      I love Deford's sports writing, and have enjoyed his previous collections, but this one left me wanting more, more about his family, more about the athletes he mentions (and "mentions" is the correct term for this collection) and finally, less-less repetition, especially when he refers to sports writers of the era that came before his. This feels like a book thrown together to fulfill a contractual obligation or to top up a bank account.

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    Over Time - Frank Deford

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