CityView Magazine

32 May 2021 "But the key thing about being a diplomat," he said, "is that you have to be better at listening than talking." When vaunted major league writer Peter Gammons was a guest on the student-run radio station WXYZ, Manuel called in and asked him a question. at wasn't necessarily the sole impetus for Manuel's own career as a baseball writer, but it would lead to a longtime friendship and to a loy standard in his own reporting and writing. "We still talk," Manuel said. "It's so great to be friends with your hero." Manuel didn't enroll in a single journalism class while at UNC, but he wrote for "e Daily Tar Heel" and ended up with his own segment on WXYZ. When another respected baseball writer, Mike Beradino, did a guest appearance, he encouraged Manuel to apply for a position with "Baseball America," the Durham-based publication that bills itself as "delivering baseball news you can't get anywhere else." Manuel applied and was turned down. But on his third try, in 1996, he was hired. "I was definitely the rookie," he wrote in reflecting on a career with the publication that spanned 21 years. "I started off in a converted closet sitting next to an intern, working at a desk that had been made in a high school shop class, filed photos endlessly and was sent on Bojangles runs Baseball America freelancer Bill Mitchell took this photo during the 2014 Arizona Fall League, when John Manuel was broadcasting games for MLB Network. From left, Joe Magrane (also with MLBN) and No. 13 is Lance Parrish, former MLB catcher, who was coaching in the AFL for the Tigers that year. John Manuel, left, in the MLB Network booth next to Joe Magrane and play-by-play man Paul Severino (who now broadcasts Marlins games).

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