Jane Leavy

Jane Leavy is an American journalist, biographer, and novelist whose books focus on baseball and the people surrounding it. She worked at The Washington Post from 1979 to 1988, writing for both its sports and Style sections. Her reporting assignments included baseball, tennis, and the Olympics. She attended Barnard College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Leavy’s baseball bibliography includes biographies of Sandy Koufax, Mickey Mantle, and Babe Ruth, along with the novel Squeeze Play. Make Me Commissioner examines the condition of the sport and proposals for improving it. Her books combine reported accounts of players and institutions with attention to the relationship between baseball, public reputation, and American culture.

Before joining The Washington Post, Leavy worked for womenSports and Self. Her later writing appeared in publications including The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and The Wall Street Journal. The reporting experience behind her books includes both daily sports coverage and longer features. Her bibliography spans fiction, individual biography, and a reported examination of the game itself.

Baseball Books

Squeeze Play: A Witty and Heartbreaking Novel About a Female Sportswriter Covering Baseball's Worst Team: This baseball novel follows reporter A. B. Berkowitz as she covers a struggling Washington Senators team. Her assignment places her inside a male professional sports environment, where the players’ private behavior complicates the public picture of the game. Drawing on Leavy’s reporting background, the story examines newspaper work, baseball loyalty, and the position of a woman covering the sport.

Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy: Leavy examines Sandy Koufax’s life and pitching career while considering the distance between his public image and private identity. The biography investigates the development of the Dodgers pitcher and the qualities that made him a major baseball figure. It also considers the meaning attached to Koufax by admirers and the challenge of describing a famously reserved athlete.

The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood: This biography examines Mickey Mantle’s playing career alongside the injuries, family difficulties, and alcoholism that shaped his life. Leavy uses interviews, research, and her own encounters with Mantle to investigate the difference between the celebrated Yankees star and the person behind that reputation. The book considers both his athletic accomplishments and the lasting consequences of his private struggles.

The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created — A Biography of Babe Ruth: Leavy places Babe Ruth’s life within the development of modern American celebrity. The biography follows the baseball star while examining the publicity, commercial opportunities, and mass attention surrounding him. Ruth’s athletic record is part of a broader account of how an unusually visible sports figure became a national personality whose influence extended beyond the baseball field.

Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong With Baseball and How to Fix It: Leavy travels and speaks with people across baseball to examine the sport’s problems and consider possible changes. Her subjects include the effects of data-driven play, the pace of games, and baseball’s relationship with its audience. The book combines criticism with reporting about what continues to attract people to the game and how that connection might be strengthened.

The three biographies concern players from different generations, but all examine the construction of a baseball reputation. Squeeze Play approaches the sport through fiction and the workplace of a reporter. Make Me Commissioner turns directly to baseball’s institutions and future. These differences make Leavy’s bibliography broader than a sequence of player profiles, even though baseball remains its central subject.