Fan Cave 06-01-11

Marty Appel talks about his Yankees career from answering the Mick\'s fan mail, thru the Bronx Zoo Years & beyond. Then - at what point are the White Sox out of it, and have we reached the final days of the Jim Hendry era?

Marty Appel

Appel started out handling the fan mail for Mickey Mantle and was named PR Director of the Yankees in 1973 -- the youngest in Major League Baseball history. His time with the Yankees saw the sale of the team from CBS to a group headed by George Steinbrenner, an infamous \"wife swap\" involving pitchers Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich, renovations to Yankee Stadium and the team\'s temporary relocation to Shea Stadium, free agency (most notably the signing of Catfish Hunter), and the \"Bronx Zoo\" era, with Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson and Billy Martin. During this period, the Yankees captured their first pennant in 12 years, and surpassed the two million mark in attendance for the first time in the American League since 1950.

After resigning in 1977 and starting a sports management company with Joe Garagiola Jr., Appel joined World Team Tennis to do PR for the New York Apples, a team featuring Billie Jean King and Vitas Gerulaitis. When the league folded at the end of the season, Appel joined the staff of Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn. He also was an Emmy-winning executive producer of Yankee telecasts for WPIX, where he also served as the station\'s VP for Public Relations, and produced pre-season football for the New York Giants and New York Jets. Appel has also worked for the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games and The Topps Company, both in public relations capacities. He currently heads his own firm, Marty Appel Public Relations.ppel has written 16 books, including his memoir Now Pitching for the Yankees, a biography of King Kelly, and children\'s biographies of Yogi Berra and Joe DiMaggio. He has collaborated with Eric Gregg, Larry King, Bowie Kuhn, Lee MacPhail, Thurman Munson, and Tom Seaver. He has also written forewords to books and contributed to a variety of publications, including Sports Collectors Digest, Yankees Magazine and Encyclopedia Americana. His Kelly biography, Slide, Kelly, Slide, won the Casey Award in 1996 as best baseball book of the year.

He has served a member of the Board of Directors for the Yogi Berra Museum and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the New York Sports Museum and Hall of Fame and is a member of the Advisory Council to the Israel Baseball League. He is also involved with the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, serving as Editor-at-Large to their quarterly magazine (Memories and Dreams). For 21 years, he helped write the text that appears on the plaques of the inductees.

Appel is frequently interviewed for YES Network, HBO and ESPN Classic programming. He was a consultant for 61*, a Billy Crystal film aired on HBO, and The Bronx is Burning, a movie airing on ESPN, in which he played himself in one scene. He also appeared in Woody Allen\'s The Purple Rose of Cairo as a restaurant patron, and as himself in a film about Barry Bonds\' 73rd home run ball, called Up For Grabs.

Appel married Patricia Alkins in 1975 and they were divorced in 1996. They have two children, Brian (Promotion Director for the Boston Phoenix) and Deborah (a music industry executive).

Appel Public Relations