Ralph Hickok

I grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, majored in English at Harvard, and the resumed a newspaper career that had begun when I began working summers as a fill-in reporter at the Green Bay Press-Gazette at the age of 14. I accidentally became a sports historian while researching my first book, "Who Was Who in American Sports." I discovered that there very few sports reference books that could help me with the research.

That led to my second book, "The New Encyclopedia of Sports," which was published by McGraw-Hill.

Pro football is my specialty, I suppose. Among my other books are "A Pro Football Fan's Companion" and "Vagabond Halfback: The Saga of Johnny Blood McNally," a biography of the colorful charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame."

I belong to the North American Society for Sport History and the Pro Football Researchers Association. The PFRA honored me with the Ralph E. Hay Award "for lifetime achievement in pro football research and historiography" and the Nelson Ross Award for the Johnny Blood biography.