Seth Everett had WDAE host Ronnie Lane as a guest on his Sports with Friends podcast. The two are ex-teammates at SiriusXM but said they had not spoken in over a decade. A main topic of the show was Lane’s recent news that he is stepping away from The Ronnie and TKras Show after nine years with partner Tom Krasniqi.
Lane is not leaving WDAE, rather taking on a new assignment. Beginning March 28, Lane will take on the role of host of the Tampa Bay Rays pre-game show “The Inside Pitch.” Lane will also continue his seasonal hosting duties with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers radio network.
Everett asked Lane about how this all happened. “It came about when contract talks came up late last year,” Lane said. “They’re aware of my age, I’ll be 68 in July…They just, out of curiosity, wanted to know when I was planning on stepping away if that was going to be soon, later, what have you. And then they also pointed out ‘look, you’re welcome to work here as long as you want, but we want you to dictate terms as to how you want to wrap up your career here.'”
Lane said he told station management at the time, “I know I no longer want to do the daily show, but I’d still like to do radio here with iHeart…They came back to me a couple of weeks later and said…’how about you transition from your daily show with Tom and move into a role with the Rays? We’ve been looking for a full-time host for “The Inside Pitch” (which proceeds Rays games)…We think you would be perfect for that.”
Lane explained to Everett the new duties will include hosting a half hour show before the Rays’ network pregame. “And, it is only Monday through Friday, with no postgame show,” Lane stated. Lane said the show will move quickly and he estimates it will take a couple of hours of prep for each pregame show he hosts.
As for wrapping up with Krasniqi, Lane said he had kept ‘TKras’ in the know about what was happening. “I actually told him a couple of years ago that I was thinking about moving towards retirement,” Lane said. “He goes ‘Well that’s your baby, you do it however you want to.’ So, I told him first right after that initial meeting with upper management…We had all of those talks and believe it or not…we were able to keep it away from everyone at the radio station, where it’s hard to keep something like that a secret. The staff just found out, trust me, about a week or so ago. We are going to have a big party…and a final broadcast a week from Wednesday…that’ll be a blast.”
On his partnership he forged with his partner of almost a decade, Lane said, “Sometimes we vehemently disagreed with one another, that was not made up, it was natural…It was not contrived. We never tried to get personal or mean spirted with it.”
