Ed Linn; Writer Specialized in Biographies and Baseball

Ed Linn, a writer and author whose subjects ranged from baseball and the New York Yankees to the lives of bank robber Willie Sutton and convicted murderer Jack Ruby, has died. He was 77.

Linn, who had retired to San Diego County about a decade ago, died Feb. 7 of cancer in San Diego, his family said Sunday.

Author of more than a dozen books, including both novels and nonfiction, Linn made his reputation crafting biographies for the famous--baseball figures Bill Veeck, Leo Durocher and Ted Williams and the criminal Sutton among them. He had been working on a book about Ruby, the killer of Lee Harvey Oswald, who shot President John F. Kennedy. Linn had covered Ruby’s trial for the Saturday Evening Post.

As a Washington Post reviewer wrote in 1993, shortly after the publication of Linn’s book “Hitter: The Life and Turmoils of Ted Williams”: “In the hands of Ed Linn as co-author, [each celebrity’s] own pungent voice emerges.”

With Veeck, Linn wrote three books--the biography “Veeck: As in Wreck,” “The Hustler’s Handbook” and “Thirty Tons a Day.” With Durocher, Linn wrote the biography “Nice Guys Finish Last”; with Sandy Koufax, the biography “Koufax”; with basketball star Bob Cousy, “The Last Loud Roar”; and with Sutton, “Where the Money Was.”

Linn won an Oppie Award for the 1975 book he wrote with Ernst Papanek, “Out of the Fire.” On his own, Linn wrote such novels as “Masque of Honor” and “The Adversaries” and such nonfiction books as “Big Julie: The Pied Piper of Las Vegas,” “Inside the Yankees: The Championship Season” and “Steinbrenner’s Yankees: An Inside Account.”

But if a single celebrity marked Linn’s career, it was Ted Williams, and if a single book capped that career, it was “Hitter.”

Reviewers at opposite ends of the country praised the Williams book as “fascinating” and “excellent.” Without deprecation, another noted that the book was more elegy than biography.

Born in Boston, Linn grew up watching Williams play. He studied journalism at Boston University because an aptitude test indicated he would be a good writer, and became a sportswriter for the Saturday Evening Post, Life, Look and several sports magazines. In 1963, he was named magazine sportswriter of the year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Assn.

Early in Linn’s career he was sent to interview Williams, who had a reputation for hating and taunting members of the press.

“I can’t just go back to the editors empty-handed,” the hapless Linn said to the star batter. “Can you answer these questions, even with no comment, so I can at least show them I tried?”

Williams granted him a full interview.

Linn went on to cover Williams for the remainder of the hitter’s career, and wrote after Williams retired in 1960: “Boston knew how England felt when it lost India.”

An aging Williams eventually consented to have Linn write his biography, resulting in the 1993 book.

“I feel that I grew up with him. I grew up in Boston following Ted Williams,” Linn told the Boston Globe.

The Globe reviewer concluded: “To our great benefit, Ted Williams has entrusted Ed Linn with his life story. It’s all here: the war exploits, the feuds, the marriages, the Great Expectorations, the comebacks, the retirements (yes, plural) and, finally, the complete story of that final day, when Williams put the appropriate exclamation point on a unique career with a home run in his final at-bat. Your father will love the book. And so will you.”

Linn is survived by his wife, Ruth; two children; a sister; and two grandsons.