Hero DeFord better over time

The reference to golf elsewhere on the page was sparked by a book I borrowed last week, Over Time by Frank DeFord, which contains an elegantly exasperated head-shake over the pretentions of that sport.

DeFord is one of my sportswriting heroes, a gifted chap who caught on with Sports Illustrated at the start of the 60s and in the process became a) one of the great American sports journalists and b) uniquely qualified to pronounce on the odd incorrect detail about boozing in Mad Men, which he does in Over Time.

It’s a memoir, and highlights come thick and fast. He reveals the threshold for accepting a gift in the great days of SI was whether or not one could consume it in a day, which made the odd bottle of whiskey less of a present and more of a challenge. He outs Mark Kram for submitting the most legendary expense claim in journalism (a talented writer with a fear of flying, Kram sailed to the UK for an assignment rather than fly, and handed this into accounts: BOAT: $10,000).