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Thom Loverro is a sports columnist, an author and most recently a podcaster. Thom uses his talents and experiences from years on radio to run his own podcast called Cigars & Curveballs. He\u2019s hosted Cal Ripken, George Foreman, Joe Jacoby, Dusty Baker and most recently Max Scherzer. You can subscribe to Cigars & Curveball on ITunes or Google Play, or listen to the latest episode online at Washington Times.\n\n\n\nAndy and Thom discuss Thom\u2019s early years growing up in Brooklyn four blocks from Ebbets Field. One of Thom\u2019s earliest memories was leaving the stadium after a Dodgers game. He tells Andy \u201cI grew up in a Brooklyn Dodgers house and then when they left a New York Mets house.\u201d\n\nAndy and Thom discuss Thom\u2019s early years growing up in Brooklyn four blocks from Ebbets Field. One of Thom\u2019s earliest memories was leaving the stadium after a Dodgers game. He tells Andy \u201cI grew up in a Brooklyn Dodgers house and then when they left a New York Mets house.\u201d\n\nThe ballpark and team were an integral part of the neighborhood. Thom Loverro tells Andy \u201cGil Hodges\u2019 brother-in-law used to be my barber when I was a kid. He had a neighborhood barber shop because the players then lived in the neighborhood everybody else lived. They didn't make a ton of money like they do now. Then they would stay close to the neighbors.\u201d Thom was eight when he watched the legendary field torn down.\n\nSometime around 1965, Thom Loverro\u2019s dad moved the family from Brooklyn to the Poconos, East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. He remembers it as very culturally different than Brooklyn. In fact, he recalls his first year in school there \u2013 7th grade \u2013 \u201cthey sent me to speech therapy class because they thought there was something wrong with the way I talked and then they realize it was just my Brooklyn accent\u201d. At the end of the day, Thom really loved growing up in the small town.\n\nThom started college at Miami, but he had to leave school under a cloud when he burnt down half of his fraternity house with a cigar on accident. He eventually wound up at a Jesuit School, the University of Scranton, a big difference over Miami. The University town was very isolated but it was what he needed to really straighten himself out and get focused on what he needed to do.\n\nThom decided he wanted to be a sports writer since he was 10. He is from a newspaper family and would read the sports sections of the New York Daily News and the New York Daily Mirror every night. He would read Dick Young and Jimmy Cannon and others like them. He started taking his dream seriously when he got to University of Scranton. \n\nAfter college, Thom worked for a couple of newspapers in Pennsylvania and then eventually wound up at the Baltimore Sun. In 1984 he started there as a news editor and reporter. He oversaw a bureau out in Howard County, and then started reporting by covering the state for the paper in Annapolis. It wasn\u2019t until 1992, when he started working for the Washington Times that he realized his dream to be a sports writer.\n\nAndy asks Thom if it is unusual going from news to sports writing, and Thom said to some extent. He tells Andy \u201cyou don't see it happen much anymore but it was great for me . . . it's a lot easier right in sports than it is news - the rules are different - the news is much more accountable.\u201d He goes on to say that his news training came in handy to cover \u201cnot just sports but all the issues that deal with sports such as the baseball strike in 1994 and the steroid stuff in baseball.\u201d\n\nAt the Washington Times, Thom covered the Washington Redskins for one year in 1992 \u2013 Joe Gibbs\u2019 last year, and then went on to cover the Baltimore Oriolesuntil 1995. Andy refers to Thom as a baseball expert and remembers listening to him on radio and people always wanting to talk to him about baseball. \n\nThom Loverro and Andy talk about how Washington eventually got its own baseball team. They almost had the Orioles,