"My idol growing up, all I wanted to be, was Stan Isaacs." —Tony Kornheiser

"Stan Isaacs is directly responsible for my television career—and much of how I approached what I've said and whom I've said it about." —Keith Olbermann

Iconoclastic and irreverent, Stan Isaacs was part of a generation that bucked the sports establishment with a skepticism for authority, an appreciation for absurdity, and a gift for placing athletes and events within the context of their tumultuous times. Isaacs draws on his trademark wink-and-a-grin approach to tell the story of the long-ago Brooklyn that formed him and a career that placed him amidst the major sporting events of his era. Mixing reminiscences with column excerpts, Isaacs recalls antics like stealing a Brooklyn Dodgers pennant after the team moved to Los Angeles and his many writings on Paul Revere's horse. But Isaacs also reveals the crusading and humanist instincts that gave Black athletes like Muhammad Ali a rare forum to express their views and celebrated the oddball, unsung Mets over the straitlaced Yankees.

Insightful and hilarious, Out of Left Field is the long-awaited memoir of the influential sportswriter and his adventures in the era of Jim Brown, Arthur Ashe, and the Amazin' Mets.

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Introduction Aram Goudsouzian

A Note on Terminology

Prologue: The Shots Heard 'Round the World

The Chipmunks

Chipmunkery

Family Ties

School Daze

Sportswriter

The Daily Compass

A Wayward Pressman

Joining Newsday

The Early Mets

The Alvin Dark Controversy

Cassius Clay Was a Grand Old Name

Jim Brown and Me

Race Matters

Hitler, Stalin, and O'Malley

The Purloined Pennant

Baseball Characters

Olympic Hypocrisy

Perfect Games

Fighters and Writers

The Sporting Hemingway

Naked Romances

Mea Culpas

Righties and Lefties

Triple Threats

Newspaper Lore

Forgive Us Our Press Passes

Inside Stuff

Flights of Fancy

Stuntsmanship

Leaving Newsday

Life in Isaacstan

A Craft and a Life

Index|"Stan was the best of us: smart, funny, compassionate, a rare sportswriter who not only understood the games but recognized they only made true sense in a larger social context. Do I love him because he took me under his wing at my first spring training or because sixty-odd years later he is still such fun to read?"—Robert Lipsyte, former New York Times sports columnist
|Stan Isaacs (1929–2013) was a sportswriter and pioneering sports media reporter. His longtime column, "Out of Left Field," appeared in Newsday. He is the author of Ten Moments That Shook the Sports World. Aram Goudsouzian is the Bizot Family Professor of History at the University of Memphis. He is the author of The Men and the Moment: The Election of 1968 and the Rise of Partisan Politics in America.