A no-nonsense, sentimental newspaperman who wore his heart on his rolled-up sleeve, Jimmy Cannon was, along with Red Smith, one of the two most influential sportswriters of his generation. He also became, in 1959, its highest paid, with a salary of $1,000 a week. At the height of his career, during the twenty years from the mid 1940s to the mid 1960s, Cannon's syndicated columns defined the genre of the personal profile. He was the first sportswriter to examine in a daily newspaper the character and innermost motivations of such legendary sports figures as Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Joe DiMaggio, whom he lyrically described in Who Struck John" (1956) as "a man who was meant to play ball on hot afternoons on the grass of big cities. He doesn't belong in the rain."

Cannon's stylistic innovations and keenly self-conscious observations established a new approach to reporting. Thoughtful and perceptive...