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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Ahead of Sunday's Super Bowl XLVIII, NPR's Mike Pesca dams up the river of hype to create a cool lagoon of Super Bowl reason.
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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.
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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).
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By the standard of normal golfing mortals, Tiger Woods has had an incredible summer. He's won multiple tournaments and millions of dollars in prize money. What he didn't do was win any of golf's four major championships. And those major wins are his measure of success.
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The Texas Rangers shut out the St. Louis Cardinals in Game Four of the World Series on Sunday night. With the series now tied at two, Game Five is Monday night at Rangers Ballpark.
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In Texas last year, 45,200 student athletes were tested for steroids under a tough new program for high schools. The most frequently tested were football players. Only 19 athletes tested positive. Some say that's proof that the testing deters kids from using drugs, while others say the program is flawed.
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The high-priced star's first year of U.S. Major League Soccer did not work out well for him or his team. Now, he's returning on loan in the middle of the season during the debut of a tell-all book that casts Beckham in an unfavorable light.
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Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff was sentenced Monday to 150 years for his monumental Ponzi scheme. The judge called Madoff's deeds "extraordinarily evil," and said he needed to send a symbolic message to those who might try to perpetuate a comparable fraud.
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Judge Sonia Sotomayor's road to a U.S. Supreme Court nomination began in a Bronx, N.Y., housing project. President Obama nominated her for the seat of retiring Justice David Souter on Tuesday. Obama said her early life in the housing project was part of the "wisdom accumulated from an inspiring life's journey."
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US Airways CEO Douglas Parker offered few new details on flight 1549, which crashed into the Hudson River. All the passengers were declared safe, and many were able to walk away once they were rescued.