NPR

This Sunday is National Radio Day, the annual commemoration of the contributions the radio industry has made.

Today, a look back at an interview I did about one of the legends of radio. And the person I interviewed was, and is, a stalwart figure in modern day radio.

For a dozen years the pioneering radio sports broadcaster Red Barber called in every Friday to NPR’s Morning Edition show, for an unscripted 4 minute talk with host Bob Edwards.

Listeners loved those segments. Even those listeners who seem to have little or no knowledge of baseball.

But Barber died in 1992.The following year, Bob Edwards wrote a memoir of those memorable conversations, a book he called Fridays With Red. And that’s when I met him.

So here now, from 1993, Bob Edwards

Bob Edwards, who is 76 now, left NPR in 2004. He currently hosts a podcast produced by AARP.

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For more than half a century, Frank Deford wrote for Sports Illustrated magazine and for 37 of those years he was also heard regularly on NPR, and seen on HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.

Six times, Deford was voted national sports writer of the year by the National Sportscasters and Sports Writers Association.

But after all those years it took him until 2012 to finally write his memoir, a book. He called Over Time.

I had met Frank a couple of times before that, but it was nice to see him again to talk about his book as we sat and chatted in a Washington DC hotel lobby.

So here now, from 2012, Frank Deford.

Framl Deford died in 2017. He was 78.

Now I've Heard Everything

Bob Edwards

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Framl Deford

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