Mickey Herskowitz was born as Milton Leon Herskowitz in 1933 in Houston, Texas to Herbert S. and Sarah Rheva Herskowitz, perhaps most notable as the former ghost writer to George W. Bush.
Background
Herskowitz"s father was born to Czechoslovakian parents in Illinois, who relocated to El Paso, Texas in 1910. His mother was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, but had also lived in Matamoras, Mexico before relocating to Texas, where she met and married Herbert in 1930.
Education
After writing sports articles and a column for years, he attended the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, where he met television sportscaster Howard Cosell, who had just signed a contract for his biography.
Career
He has written more than 30 books and has worked on autobiographies with several athletes. He also was a sportswriter and columnist for the Houston Post and the Houston Chronicle. He had an older sister named Phyllis Florence. and Bush held many meetings with the then-Texas Governor George West. Bush in preparation for an upcoming project, and soon struck a deal with Bush in 1999 about a ghost-written autobiography, a book which was eventually titled A Charge to Keep: My Journey to the White House.
The contract that both parties signed ensured the proceeds would be split between the two.
The publisher of the book was William Morrow and Company. was given unprecedented access to Bush, met him around 20 times to discuss the project Work on the autobiography began in May 1999, and within two months had completed all chapters, and submitted ten. was replaced after Bush"s handlers decided that the candidate"s views and life experiences were not being cast in a sufficiently positive light. once said of his former employer: "He thought of himself as a superior, more modern politician than his father and Jim Baker.
He told me, ‘ could have done anything. He could have invaded Switzerland.
If I had that political capital, I would have taken Iraq".
In response to Astroturf replacing the natural grass inside the Astrodome, commented, "Now Houston has the only ballpark in the major leagues with its own built-in, infield fly." In 1972, covered the tragedy at the Munich Olympics. He was inducted into the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame in 1997, and was the 3rd annual recipient of the Jimmy Wynn "Toy Cannon Award" in 2006, for community service. He was known for his occasional series "Letters from Lefty" about a mythical southpaw pitcher for the lowly Houston Colt.45s.
He was hapless, only getting through an inning by the miraculous fielding plays of his team or simply pure luck.
Lefty"s style of writing was self-effacing and his ability backed it up. The best of these columns were compiled into a book that was popular locally in Houston. covered the first game in 1962 played by the Colt.45s, who later became the Houston Astros.