Former sports writer/sports editor, magazine editor and professional writer now teaching at Oklahoma State University. I grew up in Houston and became a baseball/sports fan early on. I started as a Boston Red Sox fan because of Ted Williams, but my No. 1 team became the Houston Colt .45s/Astros once Houston joined the major leagues. I attended the first official game in the Astrodome in 1965 (the Phillies and Chris Short beat the Astros 2-0 with Dick "Don't Call Me Richie" Allen hitting the first home run the year after Philadelphia's infamous collapse to end the 1964 season). I started writing a family newspaper when I was 10, followed up with short sports stories and then wrote for my high school newspaper, one of only two daily high school papers in the country in the 1960s. After graduating from the University of Oklahoma with a journalism degree, I won the U.S. draft lottery and spent two years in the Army. I missed going to Viet Nam by one week, instead being diverted to West Germany, where I was fortunate to be pulled out of the infantry to serve in the information office in West Berlin, working on the American community newspaper The Berlin Observer. I spent 20 years in the newspaper business, and during the last few years wrote my first book, "The Pitch That Killed" about the fatal beaning of Ray Chapman by Carl Mays. I also wrote "July 2, 1903" about the mysterious death of Hall-of-Famer Big Ed Delahanty and "One Pitch Away" about the memorable 1986 baseball postseason. After my newspaper folded, I also wrote the text for "Cardtoons," a series of baseball parody cards poking fun at the arrogance, greed and labor strife in Major League Baseball. It took three years and a federal lawsuit with the Major League Baseball Players Association before we finally prevailed in court and were able to publish the cards. I returned to school to get an advanced degree and began teaching at Oklahoma State in 1999. After so many years working as a journalist, I finally was able to find a job that paid even less than newspapers. Still, it is the best job I've ever had. I now am an associate professor in the School of Media & Strategic Communications at OSU. My research focus has been the early sports writers and the first women sports writers.

"The Pitch That Killed" was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and the Casey Award winner as the best baseball book of the year in 1989.
"One Pitch Away" was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1995.
"The Pitch That Killed" was optioned to Come Aboard Productions and now is in pre-production for a movie currently titled "Deadball." Production is scheduled to begin in late 2013 with a release in late 2014.