Leonard Shecter

A forceful reporter and columnist who never avoided confrontation, Shecter left the New York Post in 1968 to write The Jocks, an iconoclastic view of sports in America. He co-authored Ball Four with Jim Bouton, which sold over 200,000 hardcover copies. He also wrote Once Upon the Polo Grounds, about Casey Stengel and the early Mets, and On the Pad, written with William Phillips, the bribed policeman whose testimony before the Knapp Commission helped uncover corruption in the New York City police department.