The Bookshelf Podcast: Curt Smith

Curt Smith, right, with Mel Allen, one of his favorite baseball voices.

As a former presidential speechwriter and current senior lecturer of English at the University of Rochester, it’s safe to say that Curt Smith loves the spoken (and written) word. His output as an author combines that enthrallment with baseball; he’s written several books that highlight not the players on the field, but the people who relate the action to the fans back home. The storytellers, as Smith likes to call them (and the title of one of his books).

Smith, is about to publish another book on the subject, this time meshing with a major milestone for a baseball institution in Mercy!: A Celebration of Fenway Park’s Centennial Told Through Red Sox Radio and TV. This marks his third publication from Potomac books in as many years (Pull Up a Chair: The Vin Scully Story in 2010 and A Talk in the Park: Nine Decades of Baseball Tales from the Broadcast Booth in 2011).

I spoke with Smith recently and, to take a personal moment here, it was an education, not just on his past work, but on the publishing process. With my first book due out next year, I appreciate any information I can pick up along the way, and Smith was quite generous with his suggestions.

Other books in the Smith oeuvre include: