Mike Pesca
Mike Pesca first reached the airwaves as a 10-year-old caller to a New York Jets-themed radio show and has since been able to parlay his interests in sports coverage as a National Desk correspondent for NPR based in New York City.
Pesca enjoys training his microphone on anything that occurs at a track, arena, stadium, park, fronton, velodrome or air strip (i.e. the plane drag during the World's Strongest Man competition). He has reported from Los Angeles, Cleveland and Gary. He has also interviewed former Los Angeles Ram Cleveland Gary. Pesca is a panelist on the weekly Slate podcast "Hang up and Listen".
In 1997, Pesca began his work in radio as a producer at WNYC. He worked on the NPR and WNYC program On The Media. Later he became the New York correspondent for NPR's midday newsmagazine Day to Day, a job that has brought him to the campaign trail, political conventions, hurricane zones and the Manolo Blahnik shoe sale. Pesca was the first NPR reporter to have his own podcast, a weekly look at gambling cleverly titled "On Gambling with Mike Pesca."
Pesca, whose writing has appeared in Slate and The Washington Post, is the winner of two Edward R. Murrow awards for radio reporting and, in1993, was named Emory University Softball Official of the Year.
He lives in Manhattan with his wife Robin, sons Milo and Emmett and their dog Rumsfeld. A believer in full disclosure, Pesca rates his favorite teams as the Jets, Mets, St. Johns Red Storm and Knicks, teams he has covered fairly and without favor despite the fact that they have given him a combined one championship during his lifetime as a fully cognizant human.
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Theo Epstein who took the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs to the World Series, acknowledges that his statistics-driven approach to building teams might make baseball boring to watch.
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Hey, did you know the Super Bowl is happening today? Of course you did. Grab some snacks — we're going to tell you what to look for in today's big game.
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Sportscaster Bob Wolff is believed to be the only announcer to call a championship game in all four major sports. He died on Saturday at the age of 96.
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Commentator Mike Pesca has some advice about how to watch the Final Four of the NBA playoffs. Here's a hint: don't watch the ball.
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Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas are the Baseball Hall of Fame's newest inductees. Last year, baseball writers pointedly left some of the biggest stars off the list due to links with performance-enhancing drugs, and this year has been no different. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were again denied induction.
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The U.S. men's soccer team will face a tough road in next year's World Cup. They'll face Ghana, Portugal and Germany in the first round.
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Writer Nicholas Dawidoff spent a year living with the New York Jets and came away with a respect for players and coaches that not all fans will like. NPR's Mike Pesca says Dawidoff's new book, Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football, demystifies the game as it entrances. -
The play Fetch Clay, Make Man explores the sense of identity through the eyes of two significant figures in black history — Stepin Fetchit (Lincoln Perry) and Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali). -
This was the final season for New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera. His number is being retired by the only team he has ever played for during his 19-year Major League Baseball career. Rivera with his signature pitch, the cut fastball, was one of the most successful closers in baseball history.
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Controversy is heating up over the selection of Qatar to host the World Cup in 2022. Soccer's governing body is deciding whether to move the series from summer to winter because of the high temperatures during Qatar's summer months.
