Ballpark Digest / August Publications

With Toronto on the rise a century ago, residents expected world-class offerings. Enter the 1926 Toronto Maple Leafs—led by the colorful “Howling Dan” Howley—and the construction of a sparkling state-of-the-art ballpark, Maple Leaf Stadium. D.M. Fox tells the story of a pivotal time in Toronto history.  In this August Publications/Ballpark Digest podcast, Jesse Goldberg-Strassler and Kevin Reichar...

The Ballpark Digest podcast is back for 2026, and we're kicking things off with a joint interview with Eric Vickrey , author of Before They Wore Dodger Blue: Tommy Lasorda and the Greatest Draft Class in Baseball History , and Steve Dittmore , author of Jim Gilliam: The Forgotten Dodger . Eric and Steve are  discussing their upcoming joint appearance/book signing at the Los Angeles Public Lib...

Mick Gillispie , Jesse Goldberg-Strassler and Kevin Reichard discuss the beginning of spring training and preview MLB rule changes in the Ballpark Digest Broadcaster Chat .  None of the 2023 MLB changes are new to Mick and Jesse, who spent the past few seasons watching these changes in action in the minor leagues. Discussed are the rule changes one by one, in order of impact: No shifts, as two fie...

The 2022 Ballpark Digest Broadcaster of the Year is Adam Marco, Voice of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders. Jesse Goldberg-Strassler and Kevin Reichard sit down with Marco to discuss his career and the current state of broadcasting in the minors. Some highlights of Marco's career: manning the midnight-to-6-a.m. shift at Froggy 101 in Scranton, spinning country music under the Froggy-themed...

Mick Gillispie , Jesse Goldberg-Strassler and Kevin Reichard discuss the beginning of the 2022 season and analyze trends on. and off the field in then Ballpark Digest Broadcaster Chat .  Topics discussed in this podcast: Topics discussed in this podcast: -       We begin a discussion in a totally irrelevant fashion discussing ponies as an endangered species. A pony, of course, is a seven-ounce bot...

Eric Shuffler , president of the Staten Island FerryHawks (Atlantic League), joins Jesse Goldberg-Strassler and Kevin Reichard to discuss the creation of the team, the work in reviving the team's scenic waterfront ballpark and how it will offer more than just baseball as a community center. Topics discussed in this podcast: ·      Unused since the 2019 season, SIUH Community Park --the former...

Emma Tiedemann , the Voice of the Portland Sea Dogs (Class AA; Eastern League), joins Jesse Goldberg-Strassler and Kevin Reichard to preview the 2022 MiLB season, discuss rule experiments and discuss Texas Leaguers and marlins. Today marks the beginning of the 2022 Minor League Baseball season, as the industry takes another major step toward normalcy. While there are COVID-19 protocols in place st...

It's a festive gathering as Mick Gillispie, Jesse Goldberg-Strassler and Kevin Reichard discuss what happened in 2021 and what to look forward to in 2022 in the year-end Ballpark Digest Broadcaster Chat.  The three bid farewell to 2021 in this free-ranging discussion. True, 2021 was a better year than 2020, the year of the COVID shutdown. And despite Omicron rampaging through the population a...

University of Florida AD Scott Stricklin joins Jesse Goldberg-Strassler, publisher Kevin Reichard and Populous's Jason Michael Ford to discuss Ballpark Digest's 2021 College Ballpark of the Year : Florida Ballpark at Alfred A. McKethan Field . The $65-million facility, replacing Alfred A. McKethan Field on the UF campus and designed by Populous , was created to please fans with game-day...

We have a sockingly different winner for Best New Logo/Branding in the 2021 Ballpark Digest Awards : The Appalachian League’s Burlington Sock Puppets , who turned some lemons into lemonade after losing its MLB affiliation. Sock Puppets Owner and  President Ryan Keur and GM Anderson Rathbun sat down with Ballpark Digest's Jesse Goldberg-Strassler and Kevin Reichard to discuss the events leadin...

The 2021 season was certainly a challenging one for anyone running a professional baseball team. But for the Somerset Patriots, there were additional challenges outside the normal course of events. For his leadership during an eventful season, Patriots president/general manager Patrick McVerry is the Ballpark Digest Executive of the Year for 2021. Challenge 1: Shift from the independent Atlantic L...

2021 Ballpark Digest Awards season continues with a chat with the Baltimore Orioles' Melanie Newman , our MLB broadcaster of the year! In this episode we discuss Newman's history-making career in MLB and MiLB broadcasting as well as reporting on other sports.  Her background includes work both as a sideline reporter for Fox Sports Southwest and  play-by-play announcer for the Frisco Roug...

Awards season continues, as our MiLB Broadcaster of the Year, Sam Levitt , sits down for a chat with Ballpark Digest's Jesse Goldberg-Strassler and Kevin Reichard. Levitt is the Voice of the Amarillo Sod Poodles and the self-proclaimed TikTok's Sportscaster (@sammylevitt), amassing some 357,000 followers. His role with the Sod Poodles is as a traditional baseball broadcaster; his role as...

The 2021 Ballpark Digest Awards season continues with a chat with the Savannah Bananas’ Jesse Cole , winner of an Editor’s Choice Award, who is single-handedly working to bring fun and a new spirit back into the increasingly staid world of baseball. Jesse Goldberg-Strassler and Kevin Reichard discuss the 2021 season with the ever-energetic Cole, the Man in the Yellow Tux. In a year when the baseba...

Season 3 of the Ballpark Digest Podcast begins with a Broadcaster Chat , as Mick Gillispie , Jesse Goldberg-Strassler and Kevin Reichard discuss the 2021 postseason, why Buster Posey is a lock for the Hall of Fame, why the 2021 Winter Meetings are likely to be a disappointment to all, and a preview of 2022 rebrandings and name changes. Some highlights of the discussion: ·       The 2021 MLB season...

We’re prepping for Season Three of the Ballpark Digest Podcast, and we’ve got plenty of interesting chats in the works for the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022. We’ll debut this season with a broadcaster chat with Mick Gillispie and Jesse Goldberg-Strassler, and then we’ll pivot to some chats with our 2021 Ballpark Digest award winners through the end of the year. After that, we’ll preview th...

The Ballpark Digest Broadcaster Chat strikes back, as Mick Gillispie , Jesse Goldberg-Strassler and Kevin Reichard gather to discuss the 2021 season—so far.  Recorded last week, the three discuss the Minor League Baseball season in the first season under MLB rule. The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly complicated what would have been a complicated season anyway, what with a new scheduling framework,...

We have a little departure from our normal broadcasts, as Rick Gosselin , Tom Shanahan and Jesse Goldberg-Strassler gather to discuss their football books from August Publications . The three esteemed authors gather to discuss their books, why they decided to cover football and its impact on culture, and how they saw their books make an impact in the football world.  Goodfellows, The Champions of...

Dave Heller, owner of two MiLB teams and a newly independent Pioneer League squad, joins Jesse Goldberg-Strassler and Kevin Reichard to discuss his approach to fun at the ballpark and MiLB’s makeover in this week’s Ballpark Digest Broadcaster Chat. Heller’s first splash in Minor League Baseball came as owner of the Quad Cities River Bandits in the Class A Midwest League, where he implemented annua...

When baseball first started, there were no dugouts—but by 1908, they became part of the game for an unusual reason, as Jesse Goldberg-Strassler explains in this week’s Tales from The Baseball Thesaurus . Dugouts came to be for a simple reason: by putting the players lower than field level, fans sitting closest to the action, in the expensive seats, would have a better view of the game. Those early...

There are plenty of great names for baseball superstars—meal tickets or cash cows—but the more interesting names are for the worst players, the muffins, as Jesse Goldberg-Strassler explains in this week’s Tales from The Baseball Thesaurus . If you are a player, you don’t want to be known by these names: a KP (can’t play), an NP (non-prospect) or a JAG (just a guy), among an abundance of derisive m...

With six panels and a consistent design topped by a squatchee, a baseball cap is an enduring symbol of the game. Jesse Goldberg-Strassler explains how baseball caps evolved in this week’s Tales from the Baseball Thesaurus . Baseball players didn’t originally wear baseball caps on the field: they wore straw hats in the fashion of the day. By 1858, however, teams like the Brooklyn Excelsiors introdu...

Tom Nichols, Voice of the Dayton Dragons, joins Jesse Goldberg-Strassler and Kevin Reichard to share his favorite baseball stories, including the arrest of a player in the middle of a game, in this week’s Ballpark Digest Broadcaster Chat. Nichols began his career as a fill-in broadcaster for the Indianapolis Indians under Howard Kellman, then spent several years as the Voice of the Mobile BayBears...

If replacement batters are called pinch hitters, why aren’t replacement pitchers called pinch pitchers? They originally were, as explained by Jesse Goldberg-Strassler in this week’s Tales from the Baseball Thesaurus . Relief pitchers are used in a pinch, and today they’re used in a variety of specialized roles: closers, set-up men, middle relievers, long and short relievers, or a mop-up man. If a...

Jesse Goldberg-Strassler and Kevin Reichard are joined by Derek Sharrer and Sean Aronson of the St. Paul Saints to discuss the return of Triple-A ball to the Saintly City in this week’s Ballpark Digest Broadcaster Chat. With the MLB makeover of Minor League Baseball for 2021, three teams—the Saints, the Sugar Land Skeeters and the Somerset Patriots—came over from the independent ranks. But both Sh...