Coaching Baseball Successfully

Mike Curran has coached high school baseball for more than three decades and currently serves as the head coach at Esperanza High School in Anaheim, California. His career record of more than 500 victories makes Curran one of the most recognizable and highly regarded coaches not only in the state of California but in all of the United States. He led Esperanza to win the 1986 national title and California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) titles in 1986, 1993, and 1997 and earned CIF Coach of the Year honors during those three years as well. Curran was named National Coach of the Year in 1998 and served as the District 8 representative for the National High School Baseball Association from 1990 to 1995. He holds a master's degree in education from Azusa Pacific University. Curran, his wife, Lucy, two daughters, Christie and Jamie, and son, Casey, reside in Placentia, California.

Ross Newhan is an award-winning sportswriter who dedicated 40 years of his life to covering baseball in southern California. He began his career in 1961 with the Long Beach Press Telegram, covering the Los Angeles Angels. Over the course of his career, Newhan won numerous writing awards, including several from the Orange County and Los Angeles press clubs. He won the Associated Press Sports Editors Award for the top news story of 1997, relating to the sale of the Dodgers, and he won the Los Angeles Times Editors Award for sustained excellence the following year. In 2001 Newhan was elected to the writer's wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and in 2002 was named the California Sportswriter of the Year. Newhan resides in Corona, California, with his wife, Connie. The couple has a son, David, who plays for the Baltimore Orioles, a daughter, Sara, and four grandchildren.