MANSFIELD -- Mike Koser said his future sister-in-law pointed him toward his career path long ago in a Mansfield Christian school hallway.
"She said, 'You like to talk, you should be on the radio station'," said Koser, the founder of Lost Ballparks, the No. 1 baseball podcast in the United States, according to Apple.
"So, I found the room in the back of Mansfield Christian where they had the school radio broadcast, and that set me on my way."
The 1990 Mansfield Christian graduate lived in Bennington Heights off Middle Bellville Road, and still has a strong fondness for his hometown.
"I love Mansfield," said Koser, who now lives and works in San Diego. "We used to go to the Pizza Hut on Lexington Avenue after games, there was the frozen yogurt place over on Park Avenue West, the movie theatre they just tore down, and the mall in Ontario.
"Every time I get the chance to go back to Mansfield I take my kids to the Mansfield Christian baseball field. It's the site of the only home run I ever hit. It was against Cardington, and I was so shocked I hit it, I was going crazy, clapping my hands and screaming around the bases.
"When I got back to the dugout our coach, Keith Clark, says 'Koser, act like you've been there before.' I said 'Coach, I never have.' "
Koser said the impetus for his career was born in Mansfield, too, the summer between his sophomore and junior years of college.
While attending Asbury University in Kentucky, he worked a summer job at Olive Garden in Ontario. It was during the filming of the Shawshank Redemption and Morgan Freeman's entourage was struggling to get seated on a night with a two-hour wait.
Koser finagled things with the hostess to get Freeman's party seated, and was able to wrangle an interview with the actor soon after while filming a scene at the Ohio State Reformatory.
"I was a Communications major and I was just thinking how cool it would be to get an interview with Morgan Freeman. Before he left the restaurant they took my number, and I figured that was the end of it. But they called me," Koser said. "The guy from Castle Rock said, 'Kid, I don't know what you did, but Morgan has only granted three interviews for this project, and you're one of them. You better know your stuff.'Â
"So I spent the whole day preparing, going to the Mansfield public library, going through the microfiche because the information wasn't at your fingertips like it is now. When I got to the Reformatory he was filming a scene in the prison yard with Tim Robbins. Afterward he took me back into his trailer, opened a Diet Coke and said, 'OK kid, what do you want to know?'
"I said he was probably looking forward to going to his boat after the movie, and I named the boat, and he said, 'OK, you've done your homework,' and I got to talk to him for about 30 minutes. It was great."
After college, Koser landed a gig with a Top 40 radio station in Billings, Montana, then took the next step at a station in Santa Barbara before landing at a Clear Channel radio station in San Diego.
He was among 4,000 people to lose their jobs in a 2009 purge that forced him to look for a different occupation. That's when he started doing voice work for commercials -- and that became his new gig.
"I just wanted to do something different, something where my fate was in my own hands," Koser said. "So I started doing commercials and voice-overs, and then people would say, 'I want that guy that was the voice in the Samsung commercial, or whatever.'
"That's what I've been doing the last 15 years. I have a studio here in my house."
That's what pays the bills for the Koser family. But what has drawn national attention is his baseball podcast, Lost Ballparks.
It's advertised like this: "Lost Ballparks," with Mike Koser, is a podcast that takes you on a journey to the golden age of baseball's Lost Ballparks as told by the players, broadcasters and fans who provide first-hand accounts of what it was like to sit in the seats on a summer afternoon at Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds, Forbes Field, Yankee Stadium, Comiskey Park, Crosley Field and many more. New episodes every Wednesday.
Lost Ballparks was launched in January of 2022, and it debuted as the No. 1 baseball podcast in America, according to Apple. It has 75,000 followers on Facebook, and 18,000 followers on Twitter (@lost-ballparks).
Koser has done very little promotion, has gone out of his way to have no commercials, and only has a very few "patrons." He calls Lost Ballparks a labor of love, and is trying to work on a potential partnership with Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.
There are no shortage of fans.
An episode with former Boston Red Sox star Fred Lynn will conclude Season 4 on March 8. Generally, each season has had 10 episodes, but there have been a few bonus podcasts throw into the mix. So far, among 46 episodes, Koser has hosted 18 Hall of Famers.
And the stories they tell...
"Mike Piazza was talking about his dad going to a card show, seeing Ted Williams and telling him about his son," Koser shared. "When the show was over, Williams said, 'Let's go see him hit.' So Ted Williams came to Mike Piazza's house to see him hit when he was in high school."
Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Brenneman, who handled the microphone for more than 30 years with the Cincinnati Reds, noted the terror of his very first Major League game at Riverfront Stadium. The reason? Hank Aaron tied Babe Ruth with his 714th home run in the first inning of Brenneman's first game.
"Almost every podcast, one of my favorite things is there comes a moment when I go, 'What?!' I didn't know that, or I never heard that," Koser said. "Larry Bowa told us he never made his high school baseball team. He tried out every year and couldn't make it. He went to a junior college, got drafted, and he's in the Phillies Hall of Fame."
Even with stories like that, Koser said it's the lesser-known guests that often provide the most vivid accounts.
"It's the stuff that's happening underneath the stadium or the innerworkings of it that gets me. This is the stuff that wasn't broadcast or you don't see an old clip of it on YouTube," Koser said.
"Some of the podcasts are the details of the grounds crew, the organist in Chicago for the White Sox, the bat boy at Connie Mack Stadium. The clubhouse manager of the Cardinals and Phillies talked about how he had to drive Satchel Paige to Kansas City.
"These are the things that were not published in a book, they're not in a magazine, the stories behind the scenes are fascinating to me."
Often times the podcast guests, including Bob Costas, John Miller and Bob Lee of ESPN, Sam McDowell, Rico Petrocelli, etc., will give Koser a tip or a number of someone else to talk to.
"It's amazing how many guests we've gotten because they're all intertwined," Koser said.
Obviously someone with a podcast titled Lost Ballparks has a strong streak of nostalgia. That's why Cleveland's Municipal Stadium will always have a special place in his memory. It was the site of his first Major League game, July 4, 1988, the Tribe was hosting the Oakland A's.
"We parked about a mile away," Koser remembered. "I loved Joe Carter, Cory Snyder, Julio Franco. It was a 16-inning game, Mark McGwire's second full season, and he hit one of the longest, highest home runs I'd ever seen, that put the A's ahead 4-2, and Dennis Eckersley came in and saved the game.
"When we got home, Bob Lee was doing the recap on ESPN, and I thought that was the greatest thing, I was just there. (Lee) became one of our first guests on the show."
Koser said even if the show ends tomorrow, it has already created a treasure trove of memories.
"Some of these are once-in-a-lifetime moments for some people," Koser said. "They start sharing stories on Facebook or Instagram, and you know how important some of these things were to people."