PITTSBURGH/ATLANTA, August 4, 2025 (PittsburghNewsWire.com) — Praises from book reviewers and former colleagues continue to come in for award-winning Pittsburgh and Atlanta sportswriter Glenn Sheeley’s career memoir, Better Than Lifting Things. “If the greatest compliment you can pay the author of a book is, ‘I couldn’t put it down,’ well, I couldn’t put it down,” said Ernie Accorsi, former New York Giants, Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Colts General Manager. “Just an excellent book.”
Better Than Lifting Things, which was released in 2024, is a behind-the-scenes, entertaining, and occasionally raucous trip through Sheeley’s 44 years in and out of newspapers, which started professionally in his mid-20s, covering the iconic Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970s.
Featuring a foreword by NFL Hall of Famer and FOX Sports personality Terry Bradshaw, Better Than Lifting Things is an insightful, inside look at other sports giants such as John Madden, Arnold Palmer, Joe Paterno, Mickey Mantle, Chuck Noll, and Al Davis, and also includes chapters which detail his special relationships with golf’s two greatest players, Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus.
“Overflowing with Hall of Famers and famous characters,” said best-selling author and Red Smith Award winner Dave Kindred, “Glenn Sheeley’s tale of a sportswriter’s life has us laughing all the way.”
Steve Eubanks, author of Augusta: Home of the Masters Tournament, said, “If you miss great writing and want to revisit some classic moments and characters from sports gone by, this book is for you.”
“It’s been a long time since a book had me laughing as much as this one,” said Golf Digest Certified Instructor John Marshall, a former publicist for Atlanta’s PGA Tour, Senior Tour and LPGA Tour events.
A former Steelers beat writer for the Pittsburgh Press, Sheeley describes life around this famous Steelers team of the ’70s, when it won four Super Bowls with players such as Bradshaw, Mean Joe Greene, Jack Lambert, and Fats Holmes, who somehow also won a bizarre cocaine trial in Amarillo, Tex.
“I was really happy to hear that Glenn had decided to complete this book,” Bradshaw said in the foreword. “I knew he’d been working on it for quite some time and I’m glad it’s finally out there for people to see.”
Sheeley continued to follow the NFL after leaving Pittsburgh for Atlanta, eventually covering 17 Super Bowls and hundreds of NFL games.
Pittsburgh fans will love Sheeley’s look at the city he fell in love with, Steeler ownership legends Art Rooney, Sr. and Dan Rooney, and Pittsburgh’s wildly unique sportscaster, Myron Cope.
Atlantans will enjoy Glenn’s inside looks at former Hawks coach Hubie Brown, Atlanta Journal legend Furman Bisher, television pioneer Ted Turner and his Atlanta Braves, and the Falcons.
Better Than Lifting Things takes you behind the scenes for Sheeley’s 26 years with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, when he assumed the golf beat in 1994 and covered 32 straight major championships, 10 of them won by Woods.
Sheeley takes you to Augusta National, where he covered 20 Masters tournaments, including Nicklaus’ victory in 1986 at age 46, and to the Open Championship, where he walked every step with Nicklaus during Jack’s last trip around St. Andrews in 2005.
One of the nation’s most respected golf writers from 1994-2005, Sheeley covered every Masters, U.S. Open and PGA Championship during that period, plus eight Open Championships and several Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup matches.
The late Red Smith, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist from the New York Times, called sportswriting “a lot better than lifting things,” and despite decades of missing holidays to make deadlines, Glenn Sheeley could not agree more.
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(Left to right) Four-time Super Bowl champion Terry Bradshaw, who wrote the book’s foreword; Glenn with Tiger Woods in 1997 after his first Masters win; the legendary John Madden with Glenn Sheeley, 1986.
GLENN SHEELEY is a former award-winning sportswriter with the Pittsburgh Press and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution who mainly covered the NFL and golf for 32 years, also making regular appearances on both the Golf Channel and CNN, before leaving newspapers to handle communications and membership sales for two private golf clubs in the Atlanta area. A Hershey, Pa., native and Penn State graduate, Glenn is retired and lives in Ormond Beach, Fla., with his wife, Nora.
https://www.amazon.com/Better-Than-Lifting-Things-sportswriters/dp/B0CX5KW2CD
www.tigerwoods.com
https://www.foxsports.com/personalities/terry-bradshaw/bio
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