Allen Barra

Allen Barra is an American journalist and author of a number of sports books. He is a contributing editor of American Heritage magazine, and regularly writes about sports for the Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic.^[1] He has also written for the New York Times and New York Observer, and was formerly a columnist for Salon.com.^[2] He formerly blogged on sports for the Village Voice website. He frequently contributes to Major League Baseball Radio and Daily Beast.^[3][4]

Personal

Barra, born in Birmingham, Alabama, currently lives in South Orange, New Jersey.^[3][5]

Publications

His 2009 book on Yogi Berra, Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee, was praised as "sturdy," "well-written," and "thorough" by the San Francisco Chronicle,^[2] but the New York Times thought it too enthralled with its subject.^[6] In 2010, Barra wrote "Rickwood Field: A Century in America's Oldest Ballpark".^[5]

Perception

Barra was one of the few sportswriters to agree with Rush Limbaugh that Donovan McNabb was overrated because of his race.^[7]

In 2009 he was the target of a widely read critique ^[8] at the website Deadspin, which targeted Barra's subjective adoration for Derek Jeter. Barra then responded, five years later, in an article for Salon, ^[9] that his argument was based on the premise that Jeter contributes in "ways that don’t necessarily show up in a box score" rather than his argument from the piece that "many observers think the primary reason [for the Yankees' success in 2009] is Mr. Jeter" rather than giving credit to the achievements of the team as a whole (six other members of the starting lineup had an OPS over 120).

References