It's Gone!... No, Wait a Minute: Talking My Way into the Big Leagues at 40

How does someone go from being one of the most successful comedy writers and producers in Hollywood to being a major league baseball announcer? It isn't easy, but it is fun, at least the way Ken Levine tells it - and lives it. It's also hilarious, fascinating, sometimes embarrassing, and always entertaining. Along with his partner, David Isaacs, Ken Levine wrote for and produced such TV hit series as M*A*S*H and Cheers. He had a great life, terrific kids, a nice home. Everything he would want - except one thing. Ken Levine was a baseball nut. He lived and breathed baseball, so he decided to do something about it. He began to "broadcast" games into a tape recorder, teaching himself as he went. Then he began auditioning. Then he landed a job announcing for a minor league team. And then, much to his shock and joy, he was chosen to be the Baltimore Orioles' radio announcer. It's Gone! ... No, Wait a Minute ... (the title comes from a blown home run call early in his career) is a charming and irreverent inside look at Levine's year on the road with the Orioles. He tells how it feels to interview Frank Robinson, knowing that the manager is about to be fired; what it's like to eat lunch with Jim Palmer during his not-so-successful comeback attempt; how it's possible to keep talking - and keep making sense - during a ninety-minute rain delay; what it's like to tell hundreds of thousands of listeners the wrong score; and how a forty-something rookie announcer can survive six months on the road with a major league baseball team while keeping his sanity reasonably intact. A diary from a perspective unlike any other, Ken Levine's wonderful baseball book is, as he might say himself, a solid double off the wall ... NO! IT'S A HOME RUN!