Ed Randall

Master of Ceremonies

Ed Randall is a leader in the field of baseball broadcasting. He hosts a weekly Saturday morning show (Remember When) with former Red Sox star Rico Petrocelli on Sirius/XM’s MLB Network, as well as Sunday morning’s Ed Randall’s Talking Baseball on New York’s WFAN, where he just began his 14th season on the only talk show in New York City radio that is dedicated solely to baseball. He also hosts a podcast for MLB.com, where he serves as an anchor/reporter and covers over 150 games a season.

Wayne G. McDonnell, Jr., M.B.A.

Storyteller | Yankees Team

Wayne attended his first Yankee game in 1981 as a four year old and his life has never been the same.

He is Academic Chair of Sports Management, Clinical Associate Professor of Sports Management and New York University’s “Business of Baseball” Professor.    He regularly appears on television programs on the MLB Network; Bloomberg; ABC; BBC; NBC; FOX; CNN; and the YES Network.

Tony Morante

Storyteller | Yankees Team

Tony has been a baseball fan since 1949 when his father, an usher at the original Stadium, brought him to his first game and he immediately became hooked on the national pastime. He started working in Yankee Stadium in 1958 as an usher and came on board full-time in 1973.  With the encouragement of the then principal owner, Mr.George M. Steinbrenner,lll, he instituted the Yankee Stadium Tour program in 1985.   Tony was born and raised in the Bronx and currently resides in the Pelham Parkway area. He served in the US Navy and is a graduate of Fordham University.

Matt Nadel

Storyteller | Yankees Team

Matt is a 17 year old from Springfield, NJ who loves video games, TV, and especially baseball. He is the youngest Pro Blogger about baseball history on MLB.com and recently authored “Amazing Aaron to Zero Zippers: An Introduction to Baseball History.” with an introduction by Jim Palmer. His favorite team from the 21st century is the Yankees but he loves the whole history of the game.  His  goal in life is to stay involved in America’s pastime.

Rabbi Jeffrey J. Sirkman

Storyteller | Red Sox Team

Rabbi Jeffrey J. Sirkman is the Senior Rabbi of Larchmont Temple, a vibrant congregation of more than 800 families which he has served the past 27 years. Rabbi Sirkman has fostered interfatith dialogue within the Larchmont-Mamaroneck community, teaming up with Rev. Bill Crawford of Larchmont Avenue Church for their National Cable Emmy award-winning program “Faith & Eggs; ” and partnering with Bishop Wayne Powell of Strait Gate Church to commemorate Martin Luther King in an annual exchange begun 20 years ago. Rabbi Sirkman is currently the Rabbi Stephen Wise Visiting Scholar at HUC-JIR.

Rabbi Sirkman was featured on HBO’s Emmy-Award winning “Curse of the Bambino” as a hopeful, life-long Red Sox fan. The following year, the Red Sox went on to win the World Series.

Robert Sullivan

Storyteller | Red Sox Team

A noted speaker and a card-carrying Red Sox fan who grew up in the Chelmsford-Lowell area during the ‘50s and ‘60s, Mr. Sullivan is the author of several award-winning books, including Flight of the Reindeer, A Child’s Christmas in New England, You’re Still Away (golf stories), and Our Red Sox: A Story of Family, Friends, and Fenway (2005).  Flight of the Reindeer was adapted into a 2000 TV movie, “The Christmas Secret.” Bob was a longtime managing editor at LIFE Books, as well as a writer and editor for several other Time, Inc. properties – Sports Illustrated (twelve years), TIME Magazine, and LIFE Magazine (senior editor, then assistant managing editor).  A Dartmouth grad, Bob lives with his wife Lucy and their three kids in Westchester County.

Chris Wertz

Storyteller | Red Sox Team

A man who celebrated his 40^th birthday in the Bleacher Bar at Fenway Park while the Sox were in Oakland, Chris Wertz stakes out a claim to the title “Renaissance Man.” He is a blogger, bar manager, movie producer, beer columnist, and carnival barker.  He is Red Sox Nation’s New York State Governor, as well as the former owner and the heartbeat of Professor Thom’s, which stood as the country’s quintessential enemy-territory Boston Red Sox bar during the team’s lively 2000-2010 decade. Chris is the co-author of the critically-acclaimed Brooklyn Spirits, as well as being a contributing author of 50 Licks (about the Rolling Stones) and a contributor to Pumpsie and Progress, a book that examines the issues that kept the Red Sox from integrating until July 21, 1959.

Jonathan LaPook, M.D.

Judge

Jonathan LaPook, M.D., is the chief medical correspondent for CBS News. He is also Professor of Medicine at the NYU School of Medicine, an internist and gastroenterologist at NYU Langone Medical Center and the Director of the NYU Langone Empathy Project. Since 2006, he has done more than 600 segments for CBS News, including pieces for “CBS This Morning”, “CBS Sunday Morning” and “Face the Nation”. He has won two Emmy awards: for his coverage in 2012 of the national shortage of drugs, and for team coverage in 2013 of the Boston Marathon Bombing.

The first Yankee World Series Jon LaPook remembers well was in 1963, the last in 2009. 2009 was better.

Jonathan Samuels, M.D.

Judge

Jonathan Samuels, M.D., is Associate Professor of Medicine at the NYU School of Medicine and a rheumatologist at NYU Langone Medical Center. He lectures at national conferences and is the author of articles and chapters about osteoarthritis, familial Mediterranean fever, and the use of ultrasound imaging in the field of rheumatology.

Although he was raised in Dallas, he is a third-generation member of Red Sox Nation who will never forget the taste of his first “Fenway Frank” at age 5 in 1976. He’s now working on indoctrinating the fourth generation, his twin sons, while rearing them in much riskier territory!

Mary Brienza

Judge

Performer/writer with a wide array of credits that involve the cracking of jokes.

Mary has many wonderful and varied credits with comedy/music trio The Chalks as co-creator, songwriter, and alter ego Judeen Chalk including: “Premium Blend” (Comedy Central), sitcom pilot (Viacom & Lifetime Television), Toyota Comedy Festival, Marshall’s Women in Comedy Festival, 54 Below, Laurie Beechman Theatre, Catch a Rising Star, Westbeth Theatre Center. Other NY theatre credits include: Leave It To Me, A Woman Possessed, Dance Dialogue Reflections, Girl Talk, Wall-to-Wall Broadway, In Your Face NY. Performer and contributing writer with the long running political satire show The Thalia Follies.