Courtesy American Chronicle

(June 1, 2009) Had he been given the choice between pitching in the major leagues this season and producing Norm Hitzges' morning radio show on The Ticket (KTCK) station in Dallas, Mike Bacsik would rather be on the mound.
Given the choice between radio and pitching for a team in Taiwan, Mexico or Double-A, Bacsik chose Hitzges.

"I have a chance now to learn something I can do until I am 60 years old," Bacsik said Friday morning about an hour before Hitzges' 10 a.m. CDT show.

At 31, Bacsik, who has five major league seasons on his resume, has begun the rest of his life. His current goal? Hosting a Monday-Friday sports talk show.

Bacsik comes to sports talk radio from the other side of the phone. A Duncanville High, Texas, graduate, he made his first call to The Ticket in late December 1996 when the Mavericks traded Jason Kidd to the Phoenix Suns.

Earlier that year, he was drafted in the 18th round by the Cleveland Indians. And so began his baseball odyssey. Near the end of his sixth minor league season, Bacsik finally made it to the Indians. He also pitched for the New York Mets, Rangers and Washington Nationals. In each of those cities, as well as the minor league stops in between, Bacsik was an avid listener to sports talk radio.

In clubhouses from coast to coast, he befriended reporters who carried notepads and microphones. While most teammates shied away, Bacsik embraced them.

"I was a spare part on all the teams I played on," Bacsik said. "But I was in the fraternity of players and in the community of writers and sports talk."

At this point, we dutifully note Bacsik's place in major league history. He was the pitcher who gave up Barry Bonds' record-breaking 756th home run.

Pitching for the Nationals on Aug. 7, 2007, the left-handed Bacsik threw a 3-2 fastball to the left-handed hitting Bonds. The pitch was supposed to go down and away. Instead, it drifted over the plate, and Bonds promptly drove it into the right-center field stands of San Francisco's AT&T Park.

It was after spending the 2005 season with the Philadelphia Phillies' Triple-A team, the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons, that Bacsik called The Ticket looking for work. He landed a job as a 27-year-old unpaid intern on the Bob and Dan Show and continued to work at the station during baseball's off-season.

He has co-hosted weekend shows and been part of the station's Mavericks and Rangers postgame shows. When Hitzges' long-time producer Mark Friedman jumped to ESPN 103.3 FM in January, Bacsik was offered the gig. He asked his agent to see any teams had interest in him as a major leaguer. None did.

Ticket brass liked Bacsik's passion for sports, his work ethic and insight on baseball. This week, Bacsik offered Hitzges and listeners a primer on Scott Feldman and how pitchers like Rick Honeycutt and Gaylord Perry cheated on the mound. Some of the information he learned from his father, Mike Bacsik, who pitched in the majors.

"I try my best not to cross the line with former colleagues where I would be outing them on the air," Bacsik said. "But I don't want to be known as just another ex-player who is in the business of protecting his former teammates. My job is to inform listeners and give them the information they want to hear."