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Deford, who has owned a home in Westport, turns 77 on Wednesday. The writer, journalist and novelist was born Dec. 16, 1938, in Baltimore.
Deford began his career as a researcher at Sports Illustrated. In addition to that, he has been a commentator on CNN and a correspondent for HBO's "Real Sports" since 1995. He also has appeared regularly on Wednesdays as a commentator for NPR since 1980.
He has written 18 books, nine of them novels. His 1981 novel, "Everybody's All-American," was named one of Sports Illustrated's Top 25 Sports Books of All Time and was later made into a film of the same title.
He has won an Emmy Award for his work as a writer during the Seoul Olympics in 1988.
A member of the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame, Deford was six times voted Sportswriter of the Year by the members of that organization, and was twice voted Magazine Writer of the Year by the Washington Journalism Review.
In 2012, he became the first magazine recipient of the Red Smith Award. In 2013, he was presented with the William Allen White Citation for excellence in journalism by the University of Kansas and became the first sports journalist ever to receive the National Press Foundation's highest honor, the W.M. Kiplinger Award for Distinguished Contributions to Journalism. He has also received PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing .
He is a longtime advocate for research and treatment of cystic fibrosis.
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