John Feinstein ( ; on July 28, 1955. His father was the General Manager of the Washington National Opera from 1980 to 1995 as well as the first executive director of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. <!-- He attended The McBurney School, where he was a swimmer and basketball player, then Columbia Grammar, where he was a swimmer. --> He attended Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School and Duke University, where he was a sports reporter for the Duke Chronicle and graduated in 1977.

Career

Feinstein joined the Washington Post in 1977 and was a full-time reporter there until 1991. He was also a columnist for Sporting News and Golf Digest. His last column, about Michigan State men's basketball coach Tom Izzo, was published in the Washington Post on the day of his death, March 13, 2025; he had completed it the day before. and was a voter in the AP Top 25 poll for men's college basketball for more than 20&nbsp;years. and on radio shows and podcasts including The Sports Junkies, The Tony Kornheiser Show, and The Jim Rome Show. On March 8, 2012, he joined SiriusXM's Mad Dog Sports Radio channel, teaming up with Bruce Murray for the sports talk show Beyond the Brink. He left by fall 2012 to host his own show on the new CBS Sports Radio, which began 24/7 all sports talk on January 2, 2013. In November 2014, he told an interviewer that CBS had fired him from the show. He also wrote sports novels for young adults. He had two children from his first marriage and one from his second.

Works

Nonfiction

  • The First Coming: Tiger Woods, Master or Martyr (1998)
  • A Season on the Brink (1986)
  • A Season Inside (1988) A followup to A Season on the Brink, on the 1987–88 college basketball season. One of the teams Feinstein most closely followed was eventual national champion Kansas.
  • Forever's Team (1990) The Duke team that lost in the NCAA final game in 1978. Because many of its stars were freshmen and sophomores, they were widely expected to win a national title, but never did so.
  • Hard Courts (1992) One year (1990) on the men's and women's professional tennis tours.
  • Play Ball (1993) The Major League Baseball season.
  • A Good Walk Spoiled: Days And Nights on the PGA Tour (1995) Winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 1995.
  • A Civil War: Army vs. Navy (1996) The 1995 football season at two US military academies, culminating in the Army–Navy Game.
  • The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight that Changed Basketball Forever (2002) The punch thrown by Kermit Washington that nearly killed Rudy Tomjanovich during an NBA game in 1977, and its impact on both men and the league.
  • Open: Inside the Ropes at Bethpage Black (2003) The 2002 U.S. Open golf tournament, held at the Black Course at Bethpage State Park on Long Island.
  • Let Me Tell You a Story (with Red Auerbach, 2004) Feinstein's interviews with the coach of the Boston Celtics.
  • Caddy For Life: The Bruce Edwards Story (2004)
  • Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today's NFL (2005) The 2004–05 Baltimore Ravens
  • Last Dance: Behind the Scenes at the Final Four (2006) Players, coaches, and referees in the NCAA men's basketball tournament Final Four.
  • Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major (2007) The players who competed at the 2005 PGA Tour Q School, ranging from obscure golfers who never reached the PGA Tour to Brett Wetterich, who went on to win the Byron Nelson Championship and play in the 2006 Ryder Cup.
  • Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember (2008) Following Mike Mussina of the New York Yankees and Tom Glavine of the New York Mets over one baseball season.
  • Moment of Glory: The Year Underdogs Ruled Golf (2010) The four relatively obscure golfers who won the men's majors in 2003.
  • One on One: Behind the Scenes With the Greats in the Game (2011) .
  • Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball (2014) Players and managers from the International League, a Triple-A league, in 2012. Among them are Scott Podsednik, a former major league All-Star and World Series hero looking for one last chance in the big leagues, and John Lindsey, who made his major league debut in 2010 after sixteen years of minor and independent league baseball, seeking another crack at the majors.
  • The Legends Club: Dean Smith, Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Valvano and an Epic College Basketball Rivalry (2016) Three North Carolina coaching legends, their stories and mutual rivalries.
  • Raise a Fist, Take a Knee (2021) Race and the Illusion of Progress in Modern Sports.
  • The Ancient Eight: College Football's Ivy League and the Game they Play Today (2024)

Adult fiction

  • Running Mates (1992) A political novel.

Fiction for young readers

Stand-alone

  • Foul Trouble (2013)
  • Backfield Boys: A Football Mystery in Black and White (2017)
  • The Prodigy (2018)

The Benchwarmers Series

  1. Benchwarmers (2019)
  2. Game Changers (2020)
  3. Mixed Doubles (2022)

The Sports Beat

A sports-mystery series for young adults in which main characters Stevie Thomas and Susan Carol Anderson are reporting on major sporting events.

  1. Last Shot: Mystery at the Final Four (2006) . Winner of the 2006 Edgar Award in the Best Young Adult category.
  2. Vanishing Act: Mystery at the US Open (2006)
  3. Cover Up: Mystery at the Super Bowl (2007)
  4. Change-Up: Mystery at the World Series (2009)
  5. The Rivalry: Mystery at the Army-Navy Game (2010)
  6. Rush for the Gold: Mystery at the Olympics (2012)

See also

References

  • C-SPAN Q&A interview with Feinstein, December 18, 2011