Mike Berry is a true baseball nerd

By Bill Tarrant

It’s not just that Mike Berry is a Certified Public Accountant. Or that he’s visited all 30 Major League ballparks. Or even that he’s a long-standing member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) - which is practically the definition of a baseball nerd.

The diminutive Berry is also eagerly living the sport, playing excellent first base for the Buccos in the Culver City Senior Softball League, while finishing the season with an on-base percentage of .511, making him one of the best 5-rated players in the league.

Berry, who lives just three blocks from the fields in Culver City, joined the league in 2022. He had been walking by the fields on Sunday mornings, hearing all the shouting, and watching the games unfold.

“But I had conflicts on Sunday morning, so I never joined. And then I decided to kind of ease my conflicts,” said the religious Berry. He had been playing in the Rancho Park interfaith league.

He began his organized softball journey as a senior in high school, forming his own team in his hometown Fresno’s recreation league. He continued playing in that league while matriculating at Fresno City community college, which provided him with his most thrilling memory.

After getting walked three straight times on four pitches, he said the fans were getting on him, especially after he took a first pitch strike in his fourth at bat. So, on the next pitch he swung hard and drove a ball off the wall in left field. “I just remember how silent the crowd was when I ran to third base for the triple.”

After beginning a psychology major at Fresno City, Berry moved to LA and eventually enrolled at Cal State Long Beach, taking accounting classes and eventually passing the CPA exam. He worked for various CPA firms for 35 years before starting his own practice, focusing on nonprofits.

“I felt that was just kind of important, you know, from a personal standpoint. I just wanted to integrate my work with kind of what I felt was important to me.”

The 74-year-old Berry is semi-retired now but still consults with some non-profits and philanthropic charities.

Berry met his wife over 35 years ago when he rented a room in his two-bedroom house to two Filipino sisters. “I was a little reluctant as a single man renting to single women, especially in those days, but I went ahead with it.” said Barry a devout Christian. They have a 32-year-old daughter, who like Berry is an accountant.

The baseball nerd combines his passion for the sport with his commitment to charity and volunteering. As a member of SABR, he leads a zoom presentation for Alzheimer patients about their baseball memories. The most recent came ahead of the first World Series game between the Brewers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. “We play the 7th inning stretch, exchange memories, and usually have a trivia quizz at the end.”

The latest quiz asked who the Yankees opponent in the 1960 World Series was. And of course it was the Pittsburgh Pirates, who won with one of the most memorable moments in World Series history on Bill Mazeroski's walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth inning at old Forbes Field.

Somehow that wasn’t enough to persuade the young Berry to root for the Buccos. Known for sporting Cincinnati Reds gear on the Culver City fields, Berry became a huge fan of that team in 1969.

“That's when they started becoming the Big Red Machine and it kind of stuck ever since.”

But after visiting every major league ballpark between 2001 and 2015, Berry is certain of one thing. “PNC park in Pittsburgh is the consensus number one park in baseball”

The baseball nerd rules!