The Best of Hal Lebovitz: Great Sportswriting from Six Decades in Cleveland

Hal Lebovitz is a true major league hall-of-famer. Enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, he’s still at the top of his game after six decades on the beat for the Cleveland News, the Plain Dealer, the News-Herald, and others.

Several generations of sports fans have grown up reading Hal Lebovitz on the sports pages.

Hal has covered just about every major sports event of the past 60 years, reporting on each with honest, straightforward words and firm opinions—and most likely a scoop on the competition.

He has written about the greats of living memory—Jim Brown, Bob Feller, Ted Williams, Woody Hayes . . . and the great moments—the Indians’ 1948 playoff game, the Browns’ 1964 championship season, Rocky Colavito’s four consecutive home runs . . .

His writing has been featured 17 times in the annual Best Sports Stories and selected for numerous other anthologies. He has won countless writing awards and been inducted into 12 halls of fame.

"Ask Hal, the Referee," his long-running column, also appeared nationally in the Sporting News, establishing Hal as one of the foremost experts on sports rule books. (Which explains why his home phone sometimes rings in the middle of a World Series game, the producers from NBC or Fox calling for an interpretation of an on-field ruling.)

Always, Hal has written for the fans. And for as long as anyone can remember, fans have been reading Hal for his particular take on events. His constant, steady presence in the local sports pages for so many decades has made Hal Lebovitz a legitimate icon in Cleveland sports—a guy who, with his typewriter, has been as remarkable and consistent and rare as a .400 hitter.