Photo © Danny Vega
Hal Lebovitz
Hal Lebovitz, who was inducted into the writer's wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2000, was a sportswriter for more than six decades. He got his first job covering high school sports for the Cleveland News in 1942 and soon became a beat writer covering the Cleveland Browns and Cleveland Indians. He was hired by the Plain Dealer in 1960 to cover baseball and was that paper's sports editor from 1964–1982. “Ask Hal, the Referee,” his popular column on sports rules, began in 1957 and also appeared in the Sporting News. A former college athlete, he also coached baseball, basketball, and football and officiated all three sports, including a stint as a referee traveling with the Harlem Globetrotters. His sportswriting continued to appear regularly in the News-Herald (Lake County, Ohio), the Morning Journal (Lorain, Ohio), and several other newspapers, until his death, at age 89, in 2005.
Books by Hal Lebovitz
Ask Hal
Answers to Fans' Most Interesting Questions About Baseball Rules from a Hall-of-Fame Sportswriter
by Hal Lebovitz
"Very few writers (or broadcasters for that matter) know the rules of the games they cover as Hal Lebovitz did." – Bob Costas Think it couldn't happen? It probably did! Just ask Hal. Hal Lebovitz rei . . . [Read More]
The Best of Hal Lebovitz
Great Sportswriting from Six Decades in Cleveland
by Hal Lebovitz
Here, collected for the first time, are the best columns and feature stories by Cleveland's greatest living sportswriter. Hal Lebovitz is a true major league hall-of-famer. Enshrined in the Baseball H . . . [Read More]