John Feinstein, a sportswriter for The Washington Post and the author of more than 40 books, including the best-sellers A Season On The Brink (1986) and A Good Walk Spoiled: Days and Nights on the PGA Tour (1995), died on March 20 at his brother’s home in McLean, VA. He was 69.

Mr. Feinstein became one of America’s best-known sportswriters after A Season On The Brink, which focused on the 1985-86 Indiana University basketball team led by coach Bobby Knight, became a best seller. The book gave readers the kind of journalistic access to Mrs. Knight, a brilliant tactician but a complicated personality, that sports books usually did not offer. The book was adapted into a television movie in 2002, starring Brian Dennehy as Mr. Knight.

With astonishing speed, Mr. Feinstein wrote books and reported on basketball, baseball, tennis, football, golf and the Olympics He was especially well known for his portraits of athletes and coaches.