Memories from the Microphone: A Century of Baseball Broadcasting

Curt Smith’s seventeenth and newest book is June 1, 2018’s The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of Baseball and the White House—the ideal author to be the first to exhaustively explore the tie between the two great American institutions of the Presidency and baseball.

To USA Today, Smith is the “voice of authority on baseball broadcasting”—and to Chicago Cubs announcer Pat Hughes, “simply one of the best baseball historians, ever.” His baseball books include Voices of The Game, what Publisher’s Weekly called the “monumental” history of baseball broadcasting. It was adapted into a smash series at the Smithsonian Institution and an acclaimed three-part series on ESPN TV.

He also wrote more speeches than anyone for George H. W. Bush during and after his 1989-93 Presidency. They include among the 41st President’s best-known speeches—his “Just War” address; speech on the USS Arizona Memorial site on Pearl Harbor’s fiftieth anniversary that John McCain termed “moving … thick with emotion”; and Bush’s 2004 eulogy to Ronald Reagan. The New York Times terms Smith’s work “the high point of Bush familial eloquence.”

Today Smith is a Senior Lecturer of English at the University of Rochester, where he teaches Public Speaking and Presidential Rhetoric. He is a Gatehouse Media columnist, Associated Press award-winning radio commentator, and has analyzed baseball and politics for numerous national and regional media outlets. NBC broadcaster Bob Costas says, “Curt Smith stands up for the beauty of words.”

Before the White House, Smith was a Gannett reporter, The Saturday Evening Post senior editor, and Cabinet speechwriter in the Reagan Presidency. Since leaving it, he has keynoted the Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture and the Great Fenway Writers Series, addressed the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR) Convention—and hosted Smithsonian Institution, Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, XM Satellite Radio, and National Public Radio affiliate series.

Among Smith’s books is Mercy!, a tribute to Fenway Park, lauded by each 1988 major-party presidential foe. Bush wrote, “Marvelous.” Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis dubbed it “extraordinary.” Other books include Pull Up a Chair: The Vin Scully Story; Of Mikes and Men; Voices of Summer; What Baseball Means to Me; and biographies of Dizzy Dean and Mel Allen. Smith also contributed to Cambridge [University’s] Companion to Baseball, the National Museum of American Jewish History’s Chasing Dreams, and over a dozen volumes of SABR’s series on years/teams.

Smith has written for, among others, The Boston Globe, Newsweek, The New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Sports Illustrated, and The Washington Post. He has appeared on many radio/TV outlets including ABC’s Nightline, BBC, CBS This Morning, CNBC, CNN, ESPN, Fox News Channel, MLB, MSNBC, Mutual, Sirius, and The History Channel.

Raised in New York State, the 1973 State University of New York at Geneseo graduate was named among the “Outstanding Alumni” of New York’s SUNY system and to the select Judson Welliver Society of former Presidential speechwriters. He is a member of the National Radio Hall of Fame committee and the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award broadcast committee. Smith lives with wife Sarah and two children in Upstate New York.