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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Put down that chicken wing and put in your two cents. Fake your way at least well into the third quarter, when everyone else at your party Sunday is well into their Bud Lights. -
The gifted quarterback can run and pocket pass, skills that helped him lead the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl. But what will it take for the Baltimore Ravens to stop — or at least slow down — Kaepernick on Sunday? -
The NHL season is expected to start Saturday. A lockout cut in half the number of games to be played and many worried it would cause economic hardship. But that is not necessarily the case.
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The city of Long Beach, on Long Island's Nassau County was one of the hardest hit by Hurricane Sandy, with entire neighborhoods ravaged by floods and wind. It seemed unlikely that the high school's football team would get to finish its season. But the Long Beach Marines saw action over the weekend.
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Major League Baseball finished its first weekend of divisional play. A couple of teams have already been eliminated thanks to baseball's new single-elimination, wild-card round.
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A tentative contract agreement has been reached between the National Football League and the referees' union. The impasse began in June when the NFL locked out the officials and used replacement referees.
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A judge in New York City has ruled that poker is more skill than chance, and thus not gambling. The case had become a rallying point for poker enthusiasts.
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As the Olympics have shown, participation in sports at this high level can teach discipline, perseverance and teamwork. But can the Olympics teach U.S. athletes to think in meters and kilos instead of feet and pounds? -
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. -
There seems to be a vague logic that dictates which Olympic sports are conducted against a backdrop of noise, and which operate in a cone of silence. Each sport has its own norms — but not all nations agree.
