Michael Lupica (born on May 11, 1952 in Oneida, New York) is an American newspaper columnist, best known for his provocative commentary on sports in the New York Daily News and his appearances on ESPN.
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Lupica spent his childhood in Nashua, New Hampshire and graduated from Bishop Guertin High School and later Boston College. He first came to prominence as a sportswriter in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. Lupica wrote "The Sporting Life" column at Esquire magazine for ten years beginning in the late 1980s, and currently writes a regular column for Travel + Leisure Golf. He has also written for Golf Digest, Parade, ESPN The Magazine, and Men’s Journal, and has received numerous awards including, in 2003, the Jim Murray Award from the National Football Foundation.[1]
Lupica writes several sports columns during the week for the Daily News, as well as a signature Sunday column, "Shooting from the Lip," which features a traditional column followed by a series of short, acerbic observations from the week in sports. He recently began writing a regular political column entitled "Mondays with Mike," which is strongly liberal in orientation.
Favorite Lupica targets include the New York Yankees, (and will often state their massive payroll in most of his articles) James Dolan, Isiah Thomas, Notre Dame football, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, former President George W. Bush, and former Vice President Dick Cheney. Lupica has also been a harsh critic of the new Yankee Stadium and was a vehement opponent of the proposed West Side Stadium. He has likewise been highly critical of the Atlantic Yards project and the attendant construction of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
Lupica co-wrote autobiographies with Reggie Jackson and Bill Parcells and collaborated with 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. Lupica also wrote The Summer of ’98: When Homers Flew, Records Fell, and Baseball Reclaimed America, which detailed how the 1998 and the Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa home run chase had allowed him to share a love for baseball with his son. Lupica has been listed a vocal critic of the steroid era.
Lupica is also a novelist; his work includes 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.[1] He has written a novel for younger audiences called Travel Team. Lupica’s Bump and Run and Wild Pitch were best sellers. 2003 saw a sequel to Bump and Run, entitled Red Zone.In April 2006, his second children's book, Heat, was published by Philomel. Heat is a fictional story based on the Danny Almonte scandal in the South Bronx Little League. In October 2006, Lupica's third children's novel, Miracle on 49th Street, was published. Summer Ball, a sequel to Travel Team, was released in 2007.
Since 1988 Lupica has been one of the rotating pundits on The Sports Reporters on ESPN.[2] He also briefly hosted an unsuccessful television chat program, The Mike Lupica Show, on ESPN2, as well as a short-lived radio show on WFAN in New York City in the mid-1990s. He has been a recurring guest on the CBS Morning News, Good Morning America, and The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour. Lupica has made frequent radio appearances on Imus in the Morning since the early 1980s.[3] On May 9th, Lupica began a daily radio show on 1050 ESPN New York from 2PM-3PM. He works along side Don La Greca, and precedes The Michael Kay Show. [4]