One of the casualties of COVID-19 was the 2020 minor league baseball season.
But minor league baseball is back in 2021 and Rick talk with the head of media relations and the play-by-play broadcaster for the Class A, Bowling Green Hot Rods, Shawn Murnin. How is life in the minor leagues? Favorite minor league promotions? All that and more!
Murnin is in his third season as the Hot Rods Play-By-Play Broadcaster and Media Relations Manager. The Vandling, Pennsylvania native graduated from East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania with a Communications degree in 2011 and began his career in baseball with the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees the same year. In 2015, he joined the Northwoods League’s Mankato Moondogs and soon thereafter, made the transition back to Minor League Baseball, making stops with the Peoria Chiefs and the Hagerstown Suns. Shawn calls all Hot Rods’ games on WBGN 94.5 FM/1340 AM, as well as authoring the Hot Rods’ TuneUp Blog. In his free time, you can find him on the golf course, collecting baseball cards, and spending time with his wife and son. His favorite sports team is the Tennessee Titans.
Fun to talk with baseball and sports and life with Shawn.
Rick is joined by Rich Mueller, founder and editor of Sports Collectors Daily.- SportsCollectorsDaily.com— a daily news website/blog for the sports memorabilia industry/hobby.
About Sports Collectors Daily:
We search the internet for stories of interest, produce our own original content and keep tabs on news made by leading companies. We then bring it all together in one place. It’s a unique concept which has grown substantially in readership, internet presence and advertiser interest in the last dozen years.
Rich serves as head writer, editor, social media manager, marketing director and sales manager.
In this episode, Rick an Rich discuss the many ways COVID-19 is impacting the sports collecting industry.
Rick and Rich are both collectors, so it’s interesting to see how collectors are reacting. Also how retailers, card companies and show promoters are adjusting. An interesting talk with Rich, as it might be a good time to be a “buyer” in the sports collecting universe.
Rick is joined this week by Baseball Hall of Famer and Atlanta Braves legend, John Smoltz.
Smoltz played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball from 1988 to 2009, all but the last year with the Atlanta Braves. An eight-time All-Star, Smoltz was part of a celebrated trio of starting pitchers, along with Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, who propelled Atlanta to perennial pennant contention in the 1990s, highlighted by a championship in the 1995 World Series. He won the National League (NL) Cy Young Award in 1996 after posting a record of 24–8, equaling the most victories by an NL pitcher since 1972. Though predominantly known as a starter, Smoltz was converted to a reliever in 2001 after his recovery from Tommy John surgery, and spent four years as the team’s closer before returning to a starting role. In 2002, he set the NL record with 55 saves and became only the second pitcher in history (joining Dennis Eckersley) to record both a 20-win season and a 50-save season. He is the only pitcher in major league history to record both 200 wins and 150 saves.
Smoltz was one of the most prominent pitchers in playoff history, posting a record of 15–4 with a 2.67 earned run average (ERA) in 41 career postseason games, and was named the Most Valuable Player of the 1992 NL Championship Series
I caught up with Smoltz not in Atlanta, but at a Bridgestone Golf event that was part of the 2020 PGA Show in Atlanta.
Smoltz has now turned his attention to golf and recently won another celebrity tournament. He’ll be making some starts on the PGA Champions Tour and hopes to qualify this year again for the U.S. Senior Open.
Smoltz is also now a respected voice in the baseball broadcast booth. Hard pressed to find someone better to explain the game than Smoltz.
Former MLB Commissioner, Bud Selig, from a book signing in the Atlanta area, this week on “Tech of Sports.”
Bud Selig is the former ninth Commissioner of Baseball. A life-long baseball fan and long-term baseball executive, he’s known for contributions to America’s Pastime including reform of the economic structure of the game, as well as labor and drug-testing policies. Tenured for more than two decades, he lives with his wife, Sue, and they have three daughters.
In this clip, he talks about his unique relationship with the legendary, Bob Uecker.
Uecker, remains a Milwaukee Brewers radio broadcaster and he’s beloved by Brewers and baseball fans.
For more than a century, the game of baseball was resistant to change – owners, managers, players, fans all were against it. No one knew this better than Bud Selig, who, as the game’s ninth commissioner and the head of MLB for more than twenty years, brought about more change during his tenure than his eight predecessors combined. He ushered in some of the most important, and controversial, changes in the game’s history – modernizing a sport that that had remained virtually unchanged since the 1950s. In this enlightening and controversial book, Selig goes inside the most difficult decisions and moments of his career, looking at how he worked to balance baseball’s storied history with the pressures of the twenty-first century to ensure its future. Part baseball story part business saga, and part memoir, For the Good of the Game chronicles Selig’s career, takes fans inside locker rooms and board rooms, and offers an intimate, fascinating account of the process involved in transforming an American institution. Featuring an all-star lineup of the biggest names from the past forty years of baseball, Selig recalls the vital games, private moments, and tense conversations he’s shared with Hall of Fame players and managers and the contentious calls he’s made. He also speaks candidly about hot-button issues including the steroids scandal and the labor and economic issues that threatened to destroy the game.
Rick is joined by the fantastic duo from Pocket Radar, Christ Stewart and Steve Goody.
Chris Stewart is Pocket Radar’s President and COO. He has an extensive engineering and inventor background holding five patents. He is a volunteer professor at Sonoma State University where he lectures in electrical engineering and business entrepreneurship.
Steve Goody is Pocket Radar’s CEO. He has an inventor and architectural background and is the inventor/ co-inventor on seventeen patents. He holds a BSEE from the University of California, Davis.
Based in Santa Rosa, California, Pocket Radar was founded on the principle that radar-gun technology should be affordable and user-friendly. Their goal was to create an accurate product line that can be use by anyone from professionals to everyday consumers. Pocket Radar’s product line is trusted by teams like the San Diego Padres, the Colorado Rockies, the Milwaukee Brewers, Georgia Tech Baseball Team, the University of Missouri Baseball Team, and many more.
Prior to being a co-founder and President/COO of Pocket Radar Inc. Chris was the Business Manager of the Agilent Technologies Radio Test business. He had P&L responsibility for the entire operation, with direct responsibility for global product development teams, marketing teams and manufacturing teams. Previously, Chris served in a series of Agilent R&D leadership positions moving from project manager to section manager to lab manager. Before the formation of Agilent, he was an R&D project manager for Hewlett Packard in their Test and Measurement business. During this time, Chris held multiple intrepreneurial positions where he successfully helped start up several new businesses and integrate multiple company acquisitions.
Chris has extensive experience building strong development teams and leading new product introductions. Before moving into management, he spent 10 years as a Microwave, RF, and Analog design engineer at Hewlett Packard gaining experience in R&D, Marketing, and Manufacturing. As an engineer, Chris designed products for the test system that is used to calibrate every Radar system in the US Navy. He has also done substantial consulting in the areas of design, new product development, and strategic business planning. He has published multiple papers and technical articles and holds 5 granted patents with more pending. Chris is also a volunteer professor at Sonoma State University where he lectures in Electrical Engineering and Business Entrepreneurship. He also serves as chairman of the External Advisory Board for the SSU Makerspace and Lead Industry Advisor for the Electrical Engineering Department.
A true inventor at heart, Chris built his first radio transmitter when he was 8 years old and has been inventing ever since. At age 16 he invented a novel radio-controlled switching system that won first place in a state-wide electronics competition. This led directly to his first job as a radio engineer at WATH/WXTQ Radio. He earned his First Class Commercial FCC License and was promoted to Chief Engineer at age 18. He put himself through college working as an engineer at WNCI Radio where he developed new audio processing and synchronous timing systems.
Before being a co-founder and CEO of Pocket Radar Inc. Steve was a co-founder and HW system architect at Caymas Systems where he helped create an award winning line of identity driven NAC Appliances. Prior to that, he was a key member of the early start-up engineering team at Cerent Corp. (acquired by Cisco Systems). He was senior HW designer and architect of Ethernet products for the industry leading Cisco ONS15454.
Before Cerent, Steve worked for Next Level Communications where he was a HW designer and architect on various telecommunications and networking products. Steve has many years of experience in HW design and architecture with extensive experience in Ethernet switching, SONET, timing, ASICs, FPGAs, Embedded FW, and DSP. Steve spent over 12 years of his professional career at Hewlett Packard as a hardware designer and principal engineer/scientist, responsible for a variety of networking product designs and architectures, including hubs, switches and network adapters.
Steve is named an inventor/co-inventor on 17 patents and holds a BSEE from the University of California, Davis. He has been a passionate inventor from a very early age and still loves the challenge of taking abstract ideas and turning them into reality.
New from Pocket Radar is Smart Coach Radar.
The Smart Coach Radar™ is the first affordable, complete speed and video training system that empowers the modern athlete and coach in many sports with the ability to create and share a digital record of their progress. By providing actionable insights into important metrics like hitting exit velocity, serve speed and pitch speed, coaches and athletes can now optimize their techniques and methods to get better results in the new era of athletic training.
A great discussion this week on Pocket Radar, sports technology and more!
