The latest guest on my Q&A podcast is Ron Blum. He is a writer and reporter for the Associated Press. His beat is baseball. And music, especially opera.

For our Q&A, go here.

Thinking of Ron, I think of Neville Cardus, one of the big names in British journalism in the 20th century. From the 1910s to the 1970s, he wrote for the Guardian, as music critic and cricket correspondent.

I further think of Harold C. Schonberg, the longtime music critic for the New York Times, who also wrote about chess. What’s more, he reviewed mysteries and thrillers, under the name “Newgate Callender.”

Ron Blum is a New Yorker, who rooted for the Mets as a kid. That’s because he was enchanted by Tom Seaver and the “Miracle Mets” of 1969. “But once you get into writing,” he says, “you learn that you root for your story, not for a team.” So true.

The first opera he saw was La bohème — brought to his high school by a touring company. And his first opera at the Met? Die Walküre.

In our podcast, I ask Ron, “Do your fields have anything in common?” “Well, the writing is very similar,” he says, “because you’re telling stories. I always think of what Dick Young told me: In what you write, you should show people what they can’t see or hear” (on television, radio, etc.).

Dick Young was a leading baseball writer in the middle of the 20th century. (Colorful and controversial.)

In a recent podcast with Jonathan Martin, the political writer, I asked, “Who’s a good interviewee in Washington?” He said that politicians had turned bland. Cautious. Smartphones are everywhere, and pols are loath to create “viral moments,” of the injurious kind.

In this latest podcast, I ask Ron Blum about interviewees in baseball. His answer is like J-Mart’s: “The iPhone and social media have changed everything.” Everyone’s afraid to wind up with egg on his face.

Another question: Has baseball regained its mojo? Or does it still lag far behind football and basketball in popularity? Another question: Did there come a time when black Americans stopped caring about baseball?

Then there is the question of “analytics.” My impression is, the human element is ever receding.

“No one in Major League Baseball ever did what he does.” Who is Ron talking about? Shohei Ohtani. “Even Babe Ruth was not a hitter and a pitcher at that level at the same time.”

In a podcast last month, George Will told me that, if he were starting a baseball team, he would start it with Henry Aaron. Ron Blum nominates Willie Mays. He also says something interesting about Yogi Berra: “He is very much underrated as a player because his playing is overshadowed by his personality” — that great, outsize personality.

Speaking of outsize personalities: Ron talks about Luciano Pavarotti in our discussion of opera. Great voice, loads of charisma, but lazy. When I heard Ron say this, I thought of a conversation I had with a major opera administrator many years ago: “Luciano is the laziest son-of-a-bitch God ever made” (but God bless him).

I have typed enough. Again, to listen to Ron Blum, go here. A total whiz in his field(s).