"A Talk in the Park"

Since radio's debut in the 1920s and television's in the '30s, the baseball announcer has become entertainer, observer, and extended member of the family.

In Curt Smith's "A Talk in the Park: Nine decades of baseball tales from the broadcast booth" many of the pastime's most popular and famous announcers-the voices-tell their favorite stories in their own distinctive words. It is riveting oral history, it's the largest total of active and retired broadcasters featured in any sports book: 116. Its radio and tv tales include every major-league team and such networks as ESPN, FOX, TBS, and the new MLB channel, and capture the voices commenting on ballparks, managers, the characters of the game, umpires, special teams, interleague play, improvements to the game-and on one another, including the beloved Ernie Harwell, who died in 2010 and to whom the book is dedicated.

Author Curt Smith is baseball's leading broadcast historian. The book is endorsed by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and the National Radio Hall of fFme.