KOPPETT, Leonard 1923-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born September 15, 1923, in Moscow, Russia; died of a heart attack June 22, 2003, in San Francisco, CA. Journalist and author. Koppett was a Hall of Fame sports writer whose career dated back to the 1940s. Brought to the United States by his family when he was five years old, he grew up in the Bronx and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He then earned a B.A. from Columbia University in 1946, joining the New York Herald Tribune as a sports reporter in 1947; he moved to the New York Post in 1954 and the New York Times in 1963. Koppett became the New York Times's West Coast reporter in 1973 before going freelance in 1978. A regular columnist for the Sporting News during the late 1960s and 1970s, he was also sports editor for the Peninsula Times Tribune during the 1980s. Toward the end of his career Koppett also taught journalism at Stanford University. Admired for his knowledge of sports, and baseball in particular, Koppett was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1994. He was the author of a dozen books about sports, including A Thinking Man's Guide to Baseball (1967), TheEssence of the Game Is Deception (1973), Sports Illusion, Sports Reality (1981), The New Thinking Fan's Guide to Baseball (1991; second edition, 2000), and The Man in the Dugout: Baseball's Top Managers and How They Got That Way (1993; second edition, 1999).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, June 24, 2003, p. B13.

New York Times, June 24, 2003, p. A28.