His most recent book is Sting-Ray Afternoons, a memoir of his 1970s childhood in Bloomington, Minnesota. It was named one of the Top 100 books of 2017 by Amazon.com.

A four-time finalist for the National Magazine Award, Rushin has had his work anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing (in three consecutive decades), The Best American Travel Writing and The Best American Magazine Writing collections. In 2006, he was named the National Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association.

His first book, Road Swing, published in 1998, was named one of the “Best Books of the Year” by Publisher’s Weekly and one of the Top 100 Sports Books of All Time” by Sports Illustrated.

A collection of his sports and travel writing—The Caddie Was a Reindeer--was named a semifinalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor.

In addition to the countless farflung locales he has reported from—Greenland, India, Indonesia—Rushin has covered all the nearflung locales to which sportswriters are routinely dispatched. He has attended nearly every major sporting event (Olympics, Super Bowl, World Cup) as well as most of the minor ones (English darts, Bassmaster fishing, competitive eating.)

The Los Angeles Times called his novel The Pint Man “engaging, clever and often wipe-your-eyes funny.”

In The 34-Ton Bat, Rushin tells the story of baseball and America through 375 objects of the game, including beer cups, bats, and bobblehead dolls. The book was praised by the Wall Street Journal: “The game will never quite seem the same after reading Mr. Rushin’s book.”

Rushin is a 1984 graduate of Bloomington Kennedy High School and a 1988 graduate of Marquette University, which awarded him an honorary doctor of letters in 2007.

He and his wife, Rebecca Lobo, have four children and live in Connecticut.