- March 05, 2008
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| Dan Valenti |
PITTSFIELD - Local broadcaster and writer Dan Valenti will speak about being a baseball sports writer and the current steroid controversy at a book signing and lecture at Berkshire Community College.
Valenti , an instructor at BCC, will appear Thursday, March 13, at 7 p.m. in the student lounge at the Susan B. Anthony Center. His talk is being presented by the Berkshire Writers Room's "Creative Experience" and BCC's Forum Credit Division.
Valenti wrote about baseball in the 1980s. He will talk about how the major-league experience has changed in the past 25 years. Valenti knows Roger Clemens, who is being investigated for steroid use, and conducted the first extended e-mail-interview Clemens ever gave from a major-league camp.
Valenti's latest book, the nonfiction extended essay "Under a Grapefruit Sun: Red Sox Spring Training a Quarter Century Ago," will be available for purchase and signing. It was published in March 2007.
Valenti operates Media Services Group, a company he founded in 1980. He is also senior editor/writer of Marian Helper magazine, for the Association of Marian Helpers. A columnist for The Berkshire Eagle and The Pittsfield Gazette from 1996 to 2006, he was voted the region's "Best Columnist" in the 2000 Berkshires Week Readers' Poll.
He has written a dozen books, many on baseball. His work has been widely published in newspapers and magazines, and his poetry and fiction has appeared in the nation's literary press and, in his early career, wrote for several newspapers. From 1992 to 2006, he hosted, wrote and produced "The Dan Valenti Show," a daily talk show on WBRK-AM 1340. The show won numerous awards, including "Best Talk Show" in its category from The Associated Press and finalist honors for "Best Talk Show Host" in the Boston Achievement in Radio (AIR) Awards. He also hosted, for two years in the mid-80s, a Boston Red Sox pregame show for WUPE/WUHN radio called the "Red Sox Report."
Valenti has taught at LeMoyne College in Syracuse, N.Y., and is currently adjunct professor of English at BCC. He has been a member of its English department since 1992.
He grew up in Pittsfield and lives with his wife, Paula, in Stockbridge.