Diamond mind covers the bases

Baseball writer, ESPN analyst Rob Neyer loves the wild-card role

By Jason Vondersmith

The Portland Tribune, Jul 15, 2005, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Rob Neyer paces around the kitchen with one hand holding the phone to his ear and the other hand hanging onto the dishcloth. He’s talking baseball on his weekly ESPN Radio gig while wiping down the counter, pouring water, petting his beloved dog and glancing out the window of his Westmoreland home. He’s in his element.

The topic turns to the Kansas City Royals, his team. The nationally recognized ESPN online columnist, television analyst and all-around baseball brainiac, a noted author of four baseball books, goes sentimental. But not for long, because Neyer thrives on the cold, hard facts of the grand ol’ game.

“I’ve been away from there for 12 years,” says Neyer, a native of Kansas City. “Good thing for me, I guess.”

The Royals have sunk into a baseball abyss Ñ small market team, no money, below-average talent and an organization that doesn’t produce No. 1 pitchers. “It’s been our failing for 15 years,” he says. It kills him to say it, but “I really believe this team will not contend for anything until it moves.”

All across America, listeners are breathing in his knowledge, as they have done for 10 years. He hardly leaves his home to report or kibitz with baseball brass and players, but Neyer has followers from Bristol, Conn., to Portland and all baseball points between. One could call him Bill James Jr., the pseudoson of the statistically driven baseball analyst, having learned the history and meaning of the game under his tutelage. Even so, the 39-year-old Neyer has established his own niche, thanks to his association with ESPN.

He writes three columns a week for ESPN.com Ñ it used to be five, in the mid-1990s Ñ and only ESPN Insider subscribers can get to his stuff. His books include “Rob Neyer’s Big Book of Baseball Lineups,” now in its third printing, and recently “The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers” with his mentor. He’s working on another book, “Baseball Blunders,” set to be completed by spring.

He appears every Friday with Bob Valvano on ESPN Radio, and on two other shows. Each Friday (sometime between 12:20 p.m. and 1:40 p.m.) he appears on ESPNews with Brian Kenny.

For two seasons, he has been cutting his teeth in TV and radio broadcasting alongside play-by-play man Rich Burk of the Portland Beavers. Not surprisingly, Burk says Neyer always does his homework, although Neyer admits to tripping over his tongue sometimes.

“Every baseball fan dreams about being a broadcaster,” Neyer says. “It’s a great hobby.”

It’s a nice life Neyer has carved out for himself. It allows him to help coach son Micah’s Sellwood Tigers Junior Baseball team, spend quality time with his old Labrador mutt, Terra, and man the house while his wife, Kristien Sima, works as a surgical assistant at Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital & Medical Center.

Neyer’s his own competition

Neyer guesses he has written more words for ESPN.com than Peter Gammons, Jayson Stark and everybody in the ESPN baseball clan. In his home office, with periodicals stacked all around him, Neyer combs the Internet, interprets statistics like others might follow the weather and watches any and every major league baseball game on satellite TV.

While Gammons and Stark and others break the news, “I’m the wild-card guy,” he says. “There’s always something in the news, and I just come in with my wild-eyed ideas.”

“It’s still fun,” he adds. “It’s getting harder and harder not to repeat myself. I’m competing with myself.”

1 | 2 Next Page >>

Facebook	Digg	Del.icio.us
Newsvine	Stumbleupon	Reddit