Jane Leavy

Jane Leavy (born in 1951) is a journalist and author. After working for many year with the Washington Post, she published the humorous novel Squeeze Play in 1990, chronicling the life of a female reporter assigned to cover a particularly wretched baseball team. However, she found her true calling with a number of biographies of baseball figures, beginning with Sandy Koufax, followed by Mickey Mantle and Babe Ruth. Her biography of the Babe, The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created won the 2019 Seymour Medal.

In 2022 she was recognized with the Henry Chadwick Award.

Further Reading

• Mark Armour: "Jane Leavy", Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Volume 51, Number 1 (Spring 2022), pp. 117-118.
• Jane Leavy: Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, Harper Collins, New York, NY, 2002.
• Jane Leavy: The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, 2010.
• Jane Leavy: The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created, Harper Books, New York, NY, 2018. ISBN 978-0062380227
• Jane Leavy: Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong With Baseball and How to Fix It., Grand Central Publishing, New York, NY, 2025. ISBN 9780306834660

Related Sites

• SABR tribute page