LEIGH MONTVILLE is the author of nine books, mostly biographies, on subjects that range from baseball greats Ted Williams and Babe Ruth to NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt, seven-foot-seven basketball player Manute Bol, boxing great Muhammad Ali, motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel and the Mysterious Montague, a forgotten golfer from the Thirties. A sports columnist at the Boston Globe for 21 years, a Senior Writer at Sports Illustrated for nine years, Montville also delivered  commentaries for the CNN/SI television network and has written for a range of other publications.

In his long career, he has interviewed Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio, Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, O. J. Simpson, Andre the Giant and most of the famous and infamous sports page names of the past 50 years. Montville has covered over 20 Super Bowls, at least a dozen World Series, numerous big prizefights, eight Olympic Games, the Tour de France, NASCAR, the Kentucky Derby, the Indy 500 and the First Gulf War.

A Cable Ace Award for television commentary, a National Headliners Award for local feature columns, the Casey Award for Best Baseball Book of 2004, and an award from the National Association of Black Journalists for Best Magazine Article are among the honors he has received. He has appeared on radio and television shows ranging from the Howard Stern Show to Charlie Rose to ‘Mike and the Mad Dog’ to ‘The Jim Lehrer News Hour’ to ‘Morning Joe.’ He has spoken at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Fenway Park in Boston and at local Barnes and Noble affiliates everywhere. In 2009, he was named to the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame in Salisbury, North Carolina. In 2016, he was given the Red Smith Award, sportswriting’s biggest honor.

Montville lives outside Boston and is the father of a grown son and daughter and the grandfather of two very active little boys. He is a 1965 graduate of the University of Connecticut.