On The Air
by Laura Nachman
Bucks County Courier Times
May 11, 2007

For Fox baseball pre-game show contributor and University of Pennsylvania graduate Ken Rosenthal, this week's trip to Philadelphia for Saturday's Cubs-Phillies games will be a nice homecoming.

A native of Long Island, N.Y., Rosenthal, 44, spent six years living in Philadelphia — four at Penn and two when he worked as a sports writer for the Camden Courier Post in the early days of his career.

“My years working for The Daily Pennsylvanian were invaluable,” Rosenthal said of his college newspaper. “My best friends are from the sports staff of that paper.”

After two decades as a baseball writer and columnist for the Baltimore Sun, like many newspaper people, Rosenthal made the jump to the Internet a few years ago. He contributes several columns a week for www.foxsports.com and appears on the Saturday game on Fox. He is responsible for keeping up with all 30 major league teams.

“I read online for two to 2 1/2 hours each day and use every minute of my 4,000-minute phone plan,” he said. (Catherine Zeta Jones would be proud.)

“All I ever wanted to be was a beat writer for a baseball team. This [Internet] stuff didn't exist when I was in school. Sometimes I stop myself and think about how far I've come.”

Besides Fox, Rosenthal calls into the WIP morning show every Monday, and Philadelphia viewers may remember him from his appearances on the old “Sports Connection with Lou Tilley” on CN8.

“I owe a lot to Lou,” he said. “He was one of the first people to put me on television.”

Rosenthal also gave props to ESPN baseball expert Peter Gammons.

“If not for Peter Gammons making the jump to television, it wouldn't have happened for somebody like me,” he said.

Special correspondent

WIP 610-AM personality Big Daddy Graham reports on the top five sports stories of the weekend on the NBC10 morning news every Monday at 6:10 a.m.

An inconvenient truth

Philadelphia's airwaves will be less cluttered this season because the Eagles cut Dhani Jones, who was more interested in tackling media gigs than opponents. A week before he was released from the team, Jones signed on to give lectures for former Vice President Al Gore's “An Inconvenient Truth” program.

E-mail: lauranachman@verizon.net