Jim Hawkins' award-winning career covering Major League Baseball has spanned half a century. He has written eight books, including biographies of Detroit Tigers Hall of Famer Al Kaline, Jack Sanford's Massachusetts hunting buddy Mark "The Bird" Fidrych, and ex-convict Ron LeFlore. In 2013, he was nominated for the Baseball Hall of Fame's J.G. Taylor Spink Award, the highest honor that a baseball writer can receive. He is a member of Athletic and Academic Hall of Fame in his hometown of Superior, Wisconsin. Although baseball is his specialty, he has also covered golf, including ten Masters tournaments and three Ryder Cups, football, including three Super Bowls, and auto racing, focusing on the Daytona 500 and Indianapolis 500. During the course of his career, he has personally known dozens of Jack Sanford's former teammates and managers. A Giants fan at the time, Hawkins shared a bit of Jack's pain as he watched the fateful seventh game of the 1962 World Series in the student union at the University of Wisconsin.