Living the American dream

WHEN Bob Lipsyte was a kid in New York, he went to a total of two professional baseball games.

His third visit to the Major Leagues was a professional assignment as a reporter for The New York Times, aged 19 in 1957. Lipsyte has always been different, always interested in sports and society as a whole, not sports as a hermetically sealed area of arrested development.

“I thought there was a real connection, and that’s what I thought the basis of my career was. When you write something even faintly controversial, or you inject race or politics into your story, the reaction is pretty speedy and often angry that you’ve punctured the sanctuary, the never-never land people live in about sports.