Showing results by narrator "Ron Barr" in All Categories

Renowned athlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee talks about her journey from the poverty of East St. Louis to international fame and accomplishment. Her book, A Kind of Grace: The Autobiography of the World's Greatest Female Athlete, is a marvelous tale of courage and conviction, which she movingly relates with passion, humor, honesty, and, of course, grace.

Three-time NL manager of the year Dusty Baker played 19 years in the major leagues and most recently managed the Washington Nationals to an NL East Championship. In this interview, Baker talks about managing in the majors and his book, Kiss the Sky: My Weekend in Monterey for the Greatest Rock Concert Ever.

Don Katz discusses the history and marketing strategies of Nike as detailed in his book Just Do It: The Nike Spirit in the Corporate World.

Hockey Hall of Famer Phil Esposito played 18 years in the NHL. He’s widely considered one of the best hockey players of all time and ranks sixth all-time in goals. After his playing career, Esposito was a founder of the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning, where he’s still part of the broadcasting team. This interview looks back at his time playing youth hockey, how the game has changed, and his playing career.

Yogi Berra comments on his book, When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Just Take It!, a collection of his famous witticisms. The baseball legend also talks about growing up in St. Louis and his baseball career.

Baseball Hall of Famer Jim Palmer played his entire 19-year career with the Baltimore Orioles, winning three World Series championships and three Cy Young Awards. He remains the youngest pitcher to throw a World Series complete game shutout. After retiring, Palmer became an MLB announcer that includes calling World Series games. He talks about his lengthy playing career and his book, Nine Innings to Success: A Hall of Famer's Approach to Achieving Excellence.

Michael Lewis talks about his books Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game and Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life. Moneyball looks at A's General Manager Billy Beane and the strategies he uses to compete in MLB as a small market team GM. Coach is a book talking about Lewis' high school baseball coach and the lessons that he learned from him.

WNBA Center Brittney Griner has had an impressive career, including being only the second NCAA basketball player to score 2,000 points and block 500 shots. She played on the USA Women's Olympic Team and the McDonald's All-American Team. She discusses growing up in Houston, being bullied in her younger years, and how basketball helped her to move past it.

Apolo Ohno is an eight-time medalist in the Winter Olympics and the 2017 champion of the hit TV show Dancing with The Stars. As the face of short-track skating, he became the youngest US national champion at 14 and was the reigning champion 12 times. This Sports Byline Classic from 2016 examines his career.

Let Me Tell You a Story: A Lifetime in the Game is a book that John Feinstein co-wrote with legendary basketball coach Red Auerbach. In the book, they cover Red's life in detail as well as his coaching career highlights.

Feinstein chronicles the years spent renovating "chewed-up" Bethpage (N.Y.) Black for the first-ever U.S. Open held on a municipal course, and the biggest ever net profit, at $13 million. He also talks about writing sports books in general and golf.

One of the last living Negro American League players, Gilbert Black of the Indianapolis Clowns talks about growing up in NYC and sneaking into the Polo Grounds to watch baseball games as a child. Black recalls the segregation and discrimination he and other black baseball players faced in the major leagues, including being made to sleep outside on a porch at training camp with the Atlanta Braves.

Shirley Babashoff owns eight Olympic swimming medals and has a part in 39 national records. Widely regarded as one of the best female swimmers of all time, she received the Olympic Order and was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame. She discusses her book, Making Waves: My Journey to Winning Olympic Gold and Defeating the East German Doping Program, her Olympic experiences, and how her childhood affected her career.

John Feinstein on his first attempt at writing a fiction novel. In the interview the plot of the book, Last Shot: A Final Four Mystery, is discussed as well as college athletics in general.

Orel discusses his book, Between the Lines: Nine Principles to Live By, his childhood, and all aspects of his Major League Baseball career.

In this Sports Byline Classic interview from 2016, Andre Ward talks about the mental aspect of boxing and his career highlights, including bringing home a gold medal in 2004 and subsequent WBA Super and WBC Super Middleweight title accolades.

Jerome Williams, former NBA forward who played for Detroit, Toronto, Chicago, and the New York Knicks talks about the importance of academics for kids in sports, and the weight that was placed on basketball as a kid growing up in the Washington D.C. area. Williams talks about starting his college basketball career at Georgetown, what it was like to play at Madison Square Garden, and touches on the Chicago Bulls vs. Detroit Pistons rivalry.

Andrea Kramer talks about her HBO’s Real Sports piece on the state of legalization of sports gambling. Legal sports betting is an estimated $5 billion industry, while illegal sports betting in the rest of the country has an estimated $150 billion value. Kramer talks about the fight to legalize sports betting in the state of New Jersey, which would change the climate for sports culture in the rest of the country. Kramer also analyzed the pushback from sports leagues against the legalization of sports betting.

David West, a power forward who played 15 years in the NBA with the Warriors, Spurs, Pacers and the Hornets/Pelicans, and won an NBA Championship with the Golden State Warriors, talks about his influential coach, playing college ball for Xavier, and the two instrumental coaches he’s played for in the NBA, Gregg Popovich of the Spurs and Steve Kerr of the Warriors. West touches on how he uses basketball as a medium to reach and influence young people.

Jon Kingdon started as an intern for controversial Raiders coach and owner Al Davis, and eventually became one of Davis’s confidants. Kingdon recalls memories from working closely with Davis including his run-ins with various players, his stretching of the rules, and more from the book he co-wrote, Al Davis: Behind the Raiders Shield: Untold Stories from Longtime Davis Confidants.