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NPR's Bill Littlefield

Bill Littlefield, a nationally known author and veteran sports commentator, hosts NPR's Only A Game, produced by NPR Member station WBUR in Boston. Since 1993 Littlefield has provided audiences with a weekly tour through the world of sports. The show covers a wide range of sports topics, from the basics like wins and losses to issues such as racism, sexism, and sports opportunities for the disabled. Only A Game is as likely to feature a tale about a day at the racetrack with the residents of a retirement home as it is a story about the World Series or the World Cup.

Littlefield has been a commentator for NPR since 1984. He is the writer-in-residence at Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts, where he has been a professor in the Humanities Division since 1976. He taught writing courses at the Harvard University Summer School and in Harvard's Kennedy School of Government Summer Program for Masters Candidates from 1981 until 1987. The author of two novels, Littlefield wrote Prospect (for which he also wrote a screenplay) and The Circus in the Woods. He published two collections of his radio and magazine work, Keepers and Only A Game. He collaborated with photographer Henry Horenstein on Baseball Days and wrote Champions, a collection of profiles of remarkable athletes for young readers. He was the guest editor of Houghton Mifflin's The Best American Sports Writing, 1998, and his column reviewing sports-related books appears every other month in The Boston Globe.

Only A Game and Littlefield's commentaries have won numerous Associated Press Awards, and he has been celebrated by the associates of the Boston Public Library as one of Boston's "Literary Lights." He is a graduate of Yale University and the Harvard University School of Education.