Mike Lupica
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Michael Thomas Lupica (born May 11, 1952) is a New York City sportswriter.
A graduate of Bishop Guertin High School and Boston College, his early career was spent with the Boston Globe (1970-74) and the Washington Post (1974-75). Lupica (Lew-pick-uh) began covering the New York Knicks for the New York Post at the age of 23.
At 24, he moved to New York City and became the youngest columnist to ever write a regular column for a New York City newspaper.[citation needed] He has also written for The National and Newsday during his long career, but has spent 25 years writing his four-times-a-week column for the New York Daily News, including his popular “Shooting From the Lip” column every Sunday.
Lupica wrote “The Sporting Life” column at Esquire magazine for ten years beginning in the late 1980s, and is currently writing a regular column for Travel + Leisure Golf. He has also written for Golf Digest, Parade, Playboy, ESPN The Magazine, and Men’s Journal, and received numerous awards, including, in 2003, the Jim Murray Award from the National Football Foundation.
The author of sixteen books, Lupica co-wrote autobiographies with Reggie Jackson and Bill Parcells, collaborated with noted author and screenwriter William Goldman on Wait ‘Till Next Year, and Mad as Hell: How Sports Got Away From the Fans and How We Get It Back. He also wrote the amorous The Summer of ‘98: When Homers Flew, Records Fell, and Baseball Reclaimed America, but has since written many columns assailing the same players he once celebrated.
Lupica’s novels include a series of mysteries involving fictional NYC television reporter "Peter Finley". One of them, Dead Air, was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Mystery and adapted into a television movie called Money, Power, Murder.
His fiction has been deemed "raunchy," but he has also written a novel for younger audiences called "Travel Team." Lupica’s Bump and Run and Wild Pitch were national best sellers. The sequel to Bump and Run, entitled Red Zone, is his latest novel. In April 2006, his second children's book, Heat, was published by Philomel. Heat is a story based on the Danny Almonte scandal in the South Bronx Little League, with the protagonist being changed to a Cuban-American boy named Miguel Arroyo. In late October 2006, Lupica's third kids novel came out Miracle on 49th Street talking about a girl whose mother left her father, a famous basketball player, and now is dying of cancer. The girl's mother has been keeping her father's identity a secret until she almost dies, and finally reveals the girl's father's identity.
In addition to all his varied work with the printed word, Lupica has spent the last thirteen years as one of the pundits on The Sports Reporters on ESPN. He also briefly hosted his own television chat program, The Mike Lupica Show, on ESPN2, as well as a radio show on WFAN in New York City in the mid-1990s. Over the years he has been a regular on the CBS Morning News, Good Morning America and The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour. On the radio, he has made frequent appearances on Imus in the Morning since the early 1980s.
Lupica is also what he describes as a “serial Little League coach”, with his three sons and a daughter. He and his family live in New Canaan, Connecticut. He is not the same Mike Lupica who hosts a radio program on WFMU.
In the Seinfeld episode The Red Dot, Elaine attempts to hook George up with a job as a reader at Pendant Publishing. When her boss, Mr. Lippman, asks George who he enjoys reading, George answers "Mike Lupica".
Though Lupica specializes in sports coverage, he has used his columns to criticize the policies of president George W. Bush, receiving criticism for politicizing the sports section. His scattershot Sunday columns have long been filled with critical praise for the hosts who have him as a guest, or of fellow writers and their latest projects, leading to accusations of logrolling.
