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Tuesday, May 30, 2023

R.I.P.: Rick Wolff, MLB Player, Coach, WFAN Broadcaster

Rick Wolff’s résumé is about as long as a Major League roster, his disparate professions linked by an adoration of sports and a fascination with sports psychology.

He was a professional baseball player, a college baseball coach, an author of books about sports psychology and an editor and publisher of books by athletes like Tiger Woods (as well as business figures).

In the early 1990s, he became the psychological coach for the Cleveland baseball team now known as the Guardians, helping them rise from the American League basement to perennial pennant contenders. And for 25 years he was the host of “The Sports Edge,” a show on the New York sports station WFAN dedicated to helping families navigate the increasingly competitive world of youth sports.

His last episode, which dealt with whether children were becoming less interested in youth sports, aired two weeks before he died on April 10 at his home in Armonk, N.Y., in Westchester County. He was 71, reports The NY Times. 


His son, John, said the cause was brain cancer.

Wolff began his quarter-century on WFAN after finishing his stint as Cleveland’s roving psychological coach. Becoming a broadcaster was hereditary: His father, Bob Wolff, was a radio and television sportscaster for nearly eight decades, longer than anyone else, according to Guinness World Records.

Over hundreds of Sunday-morning episodes, Rick Wolff tackled weighty youth-sports topics like hazing, the impact of social media and the risk of concussions, as well as more lighthearted ones like Big League Chew bubble gum.

The bad behavior of overcompetitive parents and the mental health of young athletes were motifs. In an episode last year that served as a primer on sports psychology, Wolff said that sending children to compete without mentally preparing them was “like sending your kid to take a major test in school, but they really haven’t studied or prepared for that exam.”

His psychological insights were forged in the crucible of Major League Baseball.

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