
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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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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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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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.
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Top overall seed Louisville will face Wichita State at the Georgia Dome next Saturday, while Michigan takes on Syracuse in the other national semifinal. The winners advance to the April 8 championship.
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A host of Division 1 games gets underway in men's college basketball Thursday. That play begins a massive national overdose of basketball that will continue for several weeks.The competition will be held at four sites.
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Olympic boxing seems to know that its scoring is weird, its fan base eroding, and its status as an Olympic sport is coming into question. They can address some of those problems by using stronger math to decide who wins close bouts.
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After the death of cyclist, the British star made the case for helmet laws. For that, he's been denounced in the U.K. by those who say such a law would make cycling less popular.
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If the Olympic badminton players could be faulted for anything, it's for not throwing their matches better. Manipulating the draws in tournaments has a long tradition in sport. In the early rounds of track or swimming competitions, athletes who've qualified will routinely not push to win a heat.
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The result of a judo men's quarterfinal bout was announced, and then reversed, Sunday. Since then, it became the source of international indignation over a perceived injustice. But the controversy stems from judo officials' attempt to avoid such confusion.