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ZBTalk with Jon Pessah, Epsilon of Phi Sigma Delta (University of Maryland – College Park) 1974
Jon Pessah is a founding editor of ESPN the Magazine and a New York Times bestselling author. A 46-year veteran of sports and business journalism in newspapers and magazines, Pessah was Sports Editor at the Hartford Courant, where he and his team of writers were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for an examination into the role of racism in Major League Baseball. He went on to become the Assistant Managing Editor/Sports at Newsday in the early 1990s, when his sports section was consistently voted one of the ten best in the nation by the Associated Press Sports Editors association. Pessah was Deputy Editor at ESPN Magazine, where he directed an award- winning investigation into the rise of steroids in Major League Baseball. He later returned to the writing staff, where he provided extensive coverage of the Duke Lacrosse case among many investigative works. His first book—The GAME: Inside the Secret World of Major League Baseball’s Power Brokers (Little, Brown & Company, 2015)—is a New York Times bestselling portrait of the powerbrokers who built the sport of baseball into a multi-billion-dollar business. It was the end result of five years of research, reporting, and interviews with more than 150 people. Pessah’s just-released biography of New York Yankee great Yogi Berra (Little, Brown & Company, 2020) is the definitive examination of a Hall of Fame baseball career and the long and fruitful life of an American cultural icon. Interviews with more than 100 people resulted in many never- told-before stories about how Berra overcome discrimination and verbal abuse about his perceived lack of intelligence to become a New York Yankee, a Hall of Fame, and an American icon. Pessah grew up on Long Island in the 1950s and ’60s when every schoolyard and open field was full of the Baby Boomers playing baseball. A child of a mixed marriage—Jon’s mother was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, his father a devoted follower of the New York Yankees—Pessah followed his father’s lead, becoming a catcher and a fan of the men playing in the Bronx. He was soon shifted to centerfield, where he dreamed of becoming the next Mickey Mantle. That fantasy ended early, and Pessah found his true calling at the University of Maryland, where he joined the staff of The Diamondback—the student newspaper—and fell in love with journalism. He’s written about sports—from World Series, Super Bowls, and the Barcelona Olympics to high school track meets and Memorial Day horseshoe tournaments—ever since. Pessah and his wife live on the North Shore of Long Island. He has two grown sons, two wonderful daughters-in-law, and one very young grandson, who already has several pinstriped jerseys and baseball caps. The young boy’s bat, ball, and glove—and many books on baseball—await.
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