Athletes, fans, and colleagues agree that Jane Mitchell is one of the most respected sports journalists in San Diego, if not the country. Mitchell’s uniquely personal approach to interviewing San Diego’s athletes in her One on One series on Channel 4 has led to 26 Emmy awards. Now fans can revisit and learn the back stories of those interviews in her book One on One: My Journey with Hall of Famers, Fan Favorites and Rising Stars.

“It’s very organic,” Mitchell said. “I am just trying to get it out there to Padres and Chargers fans.”

Mitchell, a San Diego native and a UCSD alum, admits she wasn’t much of a baseball or Padres fan in the spring of 1997. Back then Cox Channel 4 was preparing its launch by airing the majority of Padres games. This was the first time the Padres franchise had taken such an aggressive approach to television broadcasting.

The previous summer, Mitchell was part of a team for Cox Communications that developed a station dedicated to covering the Republican National Convention, which was held in San Diego. Despite her then lack of passion for baseball, this experience made her an ideal candidate to help develop Channel 4.

With a new station came the freedom to take a fresh approach to reporting. Soon Mitchell was conducting interviews of players, but instead of asking about their play on the field, she asked about their approach to the game of life and their individual journeys that led to realizing their dreams of becoming professional athletes.

Through the process of conducting these interviews not only did Mitchell become a fan of the game, her stories invited countless San Diegans into the Padres fan family.

Many viewers became fans because they got to know the individual players as actual people with real struggles and obstacles. “I think for me sometimes it is the vulnerability,” Mitchell said. “It might be because of an experience (the player) had as a child.”

She used former Padres outfielder Mark Kotsay as an example. “I always remember when he talked about his father who was a Los Angeles police officer. He would come every morning at two or three in the morning and kiss Mark on the check or the forehead to let him know he was home.”

Mitchell continued, “That is not only what made (Kotsay) sensitive, but you know that he is a guy who cares. When you see something like that, a vulnerability exposed in a real positive and honest way, you appreciate the athlete even more. I think you get to know them as people and why they work so hard to achieve their dreams.”

Due to the popularity of her Padres interviews, Mitchell began interviewing Chargers players and various other San Diego athletes. While her book focuses on only forty of the stories from the One on One series, each interview from her series is referenced in the book that took over 2,000 hours to write.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” Mitchell said. “I just hope more and more fans get it, because it is not just about the TV show, it is about learning the back stories in interviewing these guys at their homes. The emotional side. The fun stuff. All good stuff. No skeletons in closets.”

The book has been well received and is now in its second printing. Meanwhile, Mitchell is finding she has an audience outside of the San Diego market.

“I just got back from Boston,” Mitchell explains. “(I was) reaching out to the Red Sox nation. A lot of the people who have come through San Diego have a Boston connection including Adrian Gonzalez and Dave Roberts.”

As the success of the book grows so does Mitchell’s donations to the San Diego chapter of the ALS Association for which she has been a longtime board member. This honors her father who died of Lou Gehrig’s Disease (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis).

“I wanted a portion of the proceeds to go back to something that I care about,” Mitchell said. “I have learned a lot from athletes. They all give back. I thought that it only makes sense that if I am telling their story about these guys who do good things, then I wanted to do the same.”