Around 6:30 this evening, I was nearing Portland on I-295 on the way back to Maine from New York, and as is my custom I cut over to 95.5 WJAB, the Sox affiliate station in the greater Portland area. Not paying close attention, focusing more on driving the rental Mustang from Hertz, the tone of talk between Joe and Jerry was grave and completely out of character for the dual voices of the Red Sox. Alarm bells started going off, and I had thoughts of “I hope it’s not so and so” flit through my mind. The news, as it turned out, could be worse but was plenty bad. Boston Globe/ESPN Hall of Fame baseball columnist and analyst Peter Gammons had been hospitalized with a brain aneurysm.
Former Globe colleague Bob Ryan came on briefly to announce that he’d spoken with Gammons’ wife of better than 40 years, Gloria, and that Peter’s aneurysm had not burst and that we was in surgery expected to last several hours. Should everything go well, he was expected to be in intensive care for a week or more.
While I was born and raised as a Red Sox fan, as was everyone in our family, until college I was almost strictly a fan of the the team, rather than the game. Over the course of my sophomore and junior years at Williams, however, I was innundated with baseball information as two of my roommates were serious fans. Somewhere in there, I ran across my first Peter Gammons column in the Boston Globe. From that first column, I was hooked. And via Gammons, hooked on the game on baseball.
Here’s how hooked: In the years following my graduation from college, I lived in Manhattan on the Upper West Side (60th and Amsterdam, at first, and later 69th and Columbus). In those days, a good number of my college friends were living in the city as well which meant that Saturday nights were usually late nights. Every Sunday morning, however, without fail, I dragged myself out of bed at the crack of dawn to walk the 10 blocks down to the one paper store in the area that carried the Boston Sunday Globe, for which I had to pay double. This trip, made rain or shine, and no matter how hungover I happened to be, was made for one purpose: to procure Peter Gammons’ weekly Baseball Notes column.
Those of you that are sports fans owe Gammons a debt, whether you know it or not. The man who looked just like the picture of Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill was one of, if not the first, sportswriter to publish the now standard “Notes” type columns. Columns that broke with the traditional approach of single team/market coverage and introduced fans to news about players and teams from all over the league. Columns that attempted to give fans a look at more than what transpired on the field: back office machinations, trade rumors, and minor league news and notes. It was the very definition of “inside baseball.” Gammons knew everyone, and I mean everyone, in the game and gave new and old fans alike a peek into the game behind the game. Some of you may recall from Moneyball that Gammons is the one reporter that Billy Beane spoke with regularly, because of his connections.
More than his connections, however, Gammons was a fan of the game, someone who always tried to see the good in the game. He was the reporter who tried to make sure that players who made mistakes – such as Baltimore’s Roberto Alomar – got the chance to tell their side of the story, rather than taking the easy route like the rest of the media and calling for their head on a pike. In an attention starved era that seems to have time only for the loudest voice, delivering the worst news (think Mariotti or Shaugnessy), Gammons’ upbeat style was always a pleasure to read. There are those that have criticized this aspect of his coverage; he’s been knocked over the years for a not always justified enthusiasm in prospects such as Wilton Veras. For my part, I always saw this as preferable to the alternative.
For all of his achievements, however, I can think of no higher compliment than to say that the man singlehandedly changed his industry – a rare accomplishment, and one to be admired. He’s in the Hall for a reason.
Now I don’t know Gammons personally – I’ve never even met him – but he was probably the single biggest factor in making me a serious fan of the game of baseball; a favor that I could never possibly repay.
My thoughts are with Peter and his family, and I hope to be reading his columns again soon.
