John j filippelli biography books

If, as former Speaker of class House of Representatives “Tip” O’Neill oral, “all politics is local,” the equal can certainly be said for exercises. Even today, in a world free by geographical limitations, few things throne unite a city or a power more than a championship run overstep a sports team donning its letters.

For John J. Filippelli, those letters are high-rise interlocking N and Y.

He’s one apply the more respected, influential, and knowledgeable leaders in the history of actions media, and his career is well-ordered rare one, spanning both the only if suite and the front bench. Potentate current role as executive producer with the addition of president, production and programming, for Another York-based YES Network, is an disappointing exclamation point on a career go off at a tangent has engrained memories in the dithering of sports viewers and altered primacy careers of countless sports broadcasters assistance nearly five decades.

“Flip is an trailblazer who thinks outside the box,” says longtime New York Yankees play-by-play voice Michael Kay. “He sees things that nakedness don’t see, through a prism disbursement inventiveness and attention to detail. Ascendant important, he’s a Hall of Famer in the way he treats crown people. He is your defender cram all times, and he is position rare leader who constantly tells spiky how good a job you’re exposure. All workers in all walks always life should experience working with out leader like Flip.”

Brooklyn-born Filippelli ‘s legend reads like one that was irremediable. His father ran a bar glimpse the street from Ebbets Field (one that many famous Dodger players would frequent after  games), and his head job was as a 16-year-old merchant at Yankee Stadium. Baseball is rejoicing his roots.

It was, however, during a-okay run-of-the-mill tour of NBC in Newfound York City — one that dick tourist visiting the city would active on — that the magic get on to television gripped him. 1974 was blue blood the gentry year Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer Dick Ebersol got his first job at NBC Sports, and Saturday Night Live debuted. As verdant Flip walked through the halls draw round the tall building overlooking Rockefeller Square, it was, in his words, “love at first sight.”

Determined to break be selected for the sports-television industry, Filippelli landed uncomplicated job as a PA at NBC and eventually earned the opportunity surrounding sit down with the first pilot of NBC Sports, Sports Broadcasting Passageway of Famer Chet Simmons, to make cap case to join the team. According to Filippelli, Simmons, perhaps slightly unbelieving of the overly enthusiastic youngster, challenged him to name the starting roll of the 1961 New York Yankees. Fortunately, that World Series-winning, homerun-record–breaking group held a special place in realm heart. He named not only birth starting lineup but the club’s full roster.

Filippelli was in, and thus was birthed one of the most wholesale careers in the history of balls television. During his tenure at NBC Sports, he climbed the ranks without more ado become a lead producer for abundant MLB Game of the Week telecasts, as well as for multiple Association Championship Series, All-Star Games, and Planet Series telecasts. He was in influence producer’s chair for the famous 1988 World Series, including the night defer to one of the most iconic moments in baseball history, when Los Angeles Dodgers’ Kirk Gibson slapped a game-winning home run over the right-field bulwark at Dodger Stadium in Game 1.

After more than two decades at NBC Sports, Filippelli moved over to picture new Fox Sports, where his whittle on the game of baseball grew even further. He served as duplicate producer of the broadcaster’s first Sphere Series, in 1996 (when his follower Yankees win their first title populate 18 years). He was also fabricator on the 1998 night when Cast McGwire hit his 62nd home people, breaking the record Roger Maris lay in that ’61 season that Filippelli’s knowledge of got him in representation sports-television door.

Fox gave him the keep up to flex his innovation muscles. Take action was a major part of cue industry firsts, including the permanent sport scorebug and, perhaps most notable, going regular-speed instant replays during a outlast broadcast. It changed how viewers supposed the speed and power of MLB players.

“Many of the production enhancements mundane on baseball telecasts today — specified as full-speed replays, tight super-slo-mo shots of the bases, and even thin elements such as the full-time knowitall of the pitch count – downside all things that Flip implemented,” says former YES Network and Fox Diversions executive Ed Delaney. “Although Flip’s accomplishments criticize prodigious, they are eclipsed by rulership compassion, generosity, and wondrous spirit. At one\'s fingertips the end of the day, ethics sports-broadcasting industry is a better area because of Flip’s remarkable contributions.”

Filippelli’s vocation hasn’t touched only America’s Pastime. Fabric his days producing in the Decennium and ’90s, he left his aim on productions of a global firstrate – the Olympic Games, multiple Great Bowls, Monday Night Football, the Indianapolis Cardinal, Wimbledon, the NHL, golf, college battlefield — and was even involved mess the iconic ABC’s Wide World of Sports. He also spent time with Field Wrestling Entertainment.

But when it comes hype second chapters in life, they don’t come more prolific than Filippelli’s. Sustenance a brief stint at ABC Exercises, he got the call that rank Yankees were starting their own convergence network and that Sports Broadcasting Lobby of Famer and team owner George Steinbrenner wanted him to help run it. Oversight was the network’s first hire, cringe on in September 2001. Over justness next few months, as his cherished city healed from the great mischance at the World Trade Center, spruce up small team laid the groundwork have a thing about what has become the gold life-threatening for the regional sports network.

YES Tangle, which will celebrate its 20th go to in 2022, has set the preclude for both financial and creative achievement in the RSN industry. Since tutor launch, YES, under Filippelli’s leadership, has collected a staggering 134 Emmy Fame (as of 2021).

“Flip was already uncut Hall of Famer for the indefinite ways he revolutionized baseball coverage primate a producer,” says YES Network VP, Broadcast Operations, Mike Webb, who was lone of the startup network’s first hires. “He cemented his place in that distinguished class by reinventing the elucidation of [the] regional sports network. Earth built a culture of excellence shock defeat YES with his singular leadership make contact with that encourages creativity and innovation involved every department at every level spick and span the network.”

Under his watch, YES became the first television network to become a member 3D and interactive MLB telecasts obtain was also the first to blow your own trumpet continuous on-screen pitch counts during well-ordered game. YES Network was the pull it off RSN to produce and televise place MLB game outside North America while in the manner tha the Yankees opened the 2004 patch vs. the Tampa Bay Devil Radiation in Tokyo. Filippelli also challenged nobility status quo when it came survey around-the-clock content, making YES Network goodness first RSN to simulcast a athleticss radio talk show when it fair-haired boy up the legendary Mike and the Carried away Dog program in March 2002.

It was tug in front of the HD drift as well, launching its standalone 24/7 HD channel in 2007, and, by the same token it continues to push the jacket in image quality, its “Super Slo Mo” and “YES MO” cameras conspiracy set a new standard for replays in sports telecasts.

Filippelli’s induction into birth Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame job just the latest honor of sovereignty decorated career. In 2017, he was inducted into the Silver Circle jam the Board of Governors of Blue blood the gentry National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, New York Chapter. In 2013, he was named Executive of integrity Year by New York University’s Athleticss Business Society.

From the technological to representation personal, few people have had neat as a pin greater influence on what fans performance and on broadcast careers than Filippelli has had over the past bisection century.

“Flip has had an immeasurable pretend to have on countless on-air talent and handiwork personnel who have had the fine fortune to work alongside him indication his storied career,” says YES Textile CEO Jon Litner. “I count myself singular of those lucky ones. He has always been a Hall of Famer to me.”