Peter Gammons ’63

Baseball analyst Peter Gammons ’63 has touched virtually every media market, from newspapers and magazines to books, television, and the blogosphere. He began covering the Red Sox for the Boston Globe in 1969, and spent two decades in alternating stints at the Globe and Sports Illustrated, where he wrote features as well as the weekly “Inside Baseball.”

In 1988, ESPN came calling in what would become a 20-plus year relationship, including regular appearances on Baseball Tonight and SportsCenter. In 2009, Peter switched to the Major League Baseball Network and continued his analysis from there.

Three times Peter was voted the National Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association (and voted into its Hall of Fame), and the Baseball Writers Association of America gave him the 2004 J.G. Taylor Spink Award. Making the high honor even sweeter, it was given at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown during the annual induction ceremony.

 

Peter’s longtime coverage of the Red Sox has been such a fixture in the Boston sports landscape that January 9, 2009 was proclaimed Peter Gammons Day in Boston, and former Sox general manager Theo Epstein established a college scholarship in Gammons’ name. Peter and Theo’s rapport stretches from Boston baseball to music, as co-hosts of the Hot Stove Cool Music concert series. The annual event benefits “The Foundation to Be Named Later,” and has raised more than $7 million for the Jimmy Fund and Boston-area disadvantaged youth since its inception in 2000.

 

Gammons is also the author of Beyond the Sixth Game, a book on free agency, and GammonsDaily.com, his blog, offering news, opinion, and insight. But among his most prized work is still his debut sports article, written for Groton’s Third Form Weekly, which hangs on his office wall.