robert-lipsyte Page index.xml - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Althea Gibson and Robert Lipsyte's Forgotten Bookmark
My friend Michael Popek owns a used bookstore and runs a site called Forgotten Bookmarks, devoted to the things he finds in old books. The site did so well Michael published a book of the same name. (Check out this Q&A we did in 2011 and this profile of Michael by Shannon Firth.)...
Fair Play?
Robert Lipsyte, ESPN's Ombudsman looks at why the first-rate documentary, Let Them Wear Towels, was seemingly buried when it was aired on the same night as the All-Star Game. ...
Ticket to Ride
Robert Lipsyte describes the day Cassius Clay met the Beatles:...
New ESPN Ombud Finds Breezy Forgetfulness Over Broussard Fracas
Robert Lipsyte's first column as ESPN's ombudsman dissected the squirmworthy Chris Broussard-LZ Granderson showdown when Jason Collins came out. It's just as ombudsy as you like it, 3,300 words of media-ethics spinach. Lipsyte swings his prose like a lead pipe when he sees a deserving target; his re...
This Is Awesome: Robert Lipsyte Is ESPN's New Ombudsman
It's been more than five months since Poynter packed its bags and its independent review of Bristol's work and left ESPN as ombudsman. Considering how long it's taken, and how meh Poynter's run actually was, it was easy to forget ESPN ever even had an ombudsman at all....
The Boy On The Edge Of The Bathtub: Sam Lipsyte On Growing Up A Sportswriter's Son
Whenever somebody makes the connection between my father, Robert Lipsyte, the legendary sportswriter, and me (usually because Lipsyte is a rare name, unique to our family, a family that may or may not include a Lithuanian paratrooper I once found online who boasted in emails about our fierce mountai...
50 Years Later, Remembering The Mets' Hopeful, Awful Inaugural Spring Training
The great Robert Lipsyte has a story in today's New York Times remembering the Mets' first spring training, in 1962. Those Mets, as strange as it is to comprehend, were far more hapless than modern iterations—they went 40-120 and inspired a book called Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?—and as such ...
How I Finally Made Peace With Bob Costas, TV Journalism's Most Authentic Shill
I met Bob Costas in 1993, when I interviewed him for a TV sports documentary. I was enormously impressed. He could have filled all six hours and probably should have. It was fun. The insecurity that drove him—he kept asking if he looked all right, if he sounded too sentimental—was endearing....
How The Media Keep Getting Joe Frazier Wrong
Lawdy, lawdy Bob Lipsyte is great: "This glorification of Smokin' Joe actually began several years ago with documentaries and books that used him as a vehicle—not always unjustified—for attacking Ali. Once again, Joe was the opponent, not the headliner. Those who reviled Ali as the symbolic hero of ...
What Jock Culture Does To Pukes Like You
The following piece originally ran in The Nation's sports issue, on newsstands now....
My Lunches With Costas: A Series Of Frank Encounters With The Journalist And Shill (UPDATE)
The following is adapted from Lipsyte's new memoir, An Accidental Sportswriter, now available on Amazon....
Maybe This Is Why They Called Him "The Lip"
We're bringing back our popular "Dark Side of the Locker Room" series, which you'll remember was a compendium of journalists' bizarre, amusing and previously undocumented encounters with athletes (and often athletes' genitalia). Got a story? Send it to [email protected]....