Arnold Philip Hano (March 2, 1922 – October 24, 2021) was an American editor, novelist, biographer and journalist, best known for his non-fiction work A Day in the Bleachers, a critically acclaimed eyewitness account of Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, centered on its pivotal play, Willie Mays' famous catch and throw.

[22] His father, Alfred Barnard Hano, worked as a lawyer and was employed as a salesman during the Great Depression; his mother, Clara (Millhauser), was a housewife.

[22][23][24][25] Hano spent his pre-school years in northern Manhattan's Washington Heights, in close proximity to both the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium.

Before long, he grew tired of recycling other people's ideas; once again, his brother encouraged him: So I invented a cop who would always fall to his knees when he shot the bad guy and I called it Sitting Bull.

[26]Hano attended DeWitt Clinton High School, graduating in 1937,[4] and started that fall at Long Island University's Brooklyn campus.

When I was a copy boy at the Daily News, I was sitting in the Ebbetts Field press box when that ball got away from Mickey Owen.

[34] He served in an artillery battalion of the Seventh Infantry Division, participating in the Aleutian Islands Campaign and later landing in the first wave on Kwajalein Atoll.

[26] At Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, Hano's handwritten record of the event would form the basis for 1955's A Day in the Bleachers.

[43] The book's signature passage—its description of Willie Mays' famous catch—is frequently cited,[44] quoted,[45] or reprinted in full.

[14][46][47] Buoyed by the book's reception, Hano began to establish himself as a freelance writer, his work appearing in publications such as The Saturday Evening Post,[48] Esquire, The New York Times,[5] the Los Angeles Times, TV Guide, Sport, Sports Illustrated, Seventeen, Good Housekeeping,[49] Boys' Life,[b] Argosy,[49] Saga Magazine,[19] and True's Baseball Yearbook.

[50][51] He also authored several sports biographies in the 1960s and '70s, including those of Mays, Sandy Koufax, Roberto Clemente, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Muhammad Ali.

[20] He also received the 1963 Sidney Hillman Memorial Award for magazine journalism[54] for "Burned Out Americans",[19] a muckraking study of conditions facing migratory farm workers in California's Central Valley.

[56] In 2012, Hano became the 12th recipient of Baseball Reliquary's annual Hilda Award,[17] established in 2001 "to recognize distinguished service to the game by a fan.

[63][64] In 2013, Hano and his wife were honored as Laguna Beach "Citizens of the Year" in the city's annual Patriot's Day Parade.