Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Halberstam wrote more than a score of outstanding books on a variety of subjects, which included Vietnam, where he served as a correspondent for the New York Times; the Civil Rights movement, which he covered for two daily newspapers in the south when he was in his 20s; and America in the 1950s.

But in the latter part of his five-decade journalistic career, Halberstam shifted his considerable energies and writing talents toward a different subject: Athletics. He wrote “The Amateurs,” a critically acclaimed account of four young oarsmen vying for spots on the 1984 United States Olympic Rowing team. The prolific author’s other sports-related books include tomes on National Basketball Association superstar Michael Jordan, New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, and the 1949 American League pennant race between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. All were widely praised, and justifiably so; everything Halberstam ever wrote was insightful, impeccably researched, encyclopedic in detail and eminently readable.

This month’s sports headlines have been distressing ones for nominal fans of games and of certain athletes who play them. For the first time since 1996, no eligible candidate was admitted to the Baseball Hall of Fame, most likely because of an ongoing controversy involving which of the best-known candidates did or didn’t use performance-enhancing substances during his career.

One of the top two players eligible for admission, a record-setting home-run-hitting outfielder, loudly, self-righteously and arrogantly lied about his use of pharmaceutical enhancements for years. Another elite candidate, a much-decorated pitcher who played for both the Red Sox and Yankees during his stellar 24-year big league tenure, continues to self-righteously and stridently deny his use of illegal substances despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and a dwindling audience that increasingly thinks of him as yesterday’s news, if they think about him at all.

Amidst much ballyhoo last week, a seven-time “winner” of cycling’s Tour de France admitted what had been evident to all but the most willfully naïve for some time: He pharmaceutically augmented himself in order to attain and then perpetuate domination of his chosen sport. He made his confession to a national cable TV audience after years of angrily, effectively and on occasion litigiously denying wide-spread allegations of his cheating with a shrill audacity that should have made Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and their legions of enabling defenders green with envy.

Then the story of Notre Dame University football standout Manti Te’o’s nonexistent girlfriend came to light. At this writing it’s uncertain whether or not the star linebacker invented the tale of the imaginary lady friend ”“ who succumbed to a disease she never had shortly after being seriously injured in a car wreck that never occurred ”“ but this much is clear: He continued to earnestly answer media questions about her even after the hoax had been privately revealed to him by Notre Dame officials.

David Halberstam undoubtedly saw all this coming.

In February of 1995, Major League Baseball was in the midst of a labor impasse that had caused the cancellation of the previous season’s final two months, plus the playoffs and World Series. At the time, Halberstam was putting the finishing touches on “October 1964,” his nostalgic, detail-rich look back at the two teams (the Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals) which met in that autumn’s Fall Classic. The eloquent introduction he penned that winter chided those responsible for the sport’s ongoing state of affairs at the time.

Of Major League Baseball’s plutocracy, he wrote, “The owners have seemed from the outset, despite their claims to the contrary, determined to break the powerful players’ union, even though it is the owners themselves who have handed out what often seem like demented salaries to their stars and semi-stars.”

Similarly, he noted the players had exhibited, “”¦ a palpable me-first arrogance in recent years in terms of their treatment of both their fans and the media. They may be bigger, stronger, faster and more talented, but they are not necessarily more likable.” Then he added this gem: “Regrettably, nothing unlocks the ego lurking within the young more than early, premature financial independence.”

Those words seem prescient in light of current events. He might have added this coda: “And nothing can change the honesty, ethical standards, morality and sense of fair play amongst young athletes and their sycophantic followers like the prospect of achieving that premature financial independence, not to mention the entitlements and celebrity that often accompany it.”

But we’ll never know for sure. Six years ago, Halberstam died in a real car crash, unlike the contrived one that injured Manti Te’o’s fictitious, leukemia-doomed girlfriend. Halberstam’s actual tragic accident not only snuffed out the remaining natural life of a still-active and reasonably healthy 73-year-old man, it deprived America of one of its fiercest, most dedicated and insightful journalists.

— Andy Young teaches high school English in York County. It’s been more than a decade since he last attended a major league baseball game, and even longer since he’s had an imaginary girlfriend.