He has the right stuff

(This is a great article on Peter Gammons that's no longer archived, so I'm posting it here...)

He has the write stuff

By TIMOTHY GORMAN
Cape Cod Times

CATAUMET - As he gazes off his back porch in Cataumet, beyond the freshly groomed lawn and flower beds, Peter Gammons catches a glimpse of the water. It's hazy and humid and the sun is hard to find this day, but the vista is usually something out of a Corona commercial. As he describes how the sun warms the deck, it's easy to see why Gammons picked this plat of land for his vacation home. Vacation home is not what he'd call it. Vacation is a foreign word to Gammons and he certainly doesn't take vacations the way most people do.

His cell phone is always within reach and it rings often. On several occasions, an ESPN crew has come to his home to help him report on the day of Major League Baseball's trading deadline. ("I didn't even have to put my shoes on," Gammons says with a chuckle).

In the past he's been reluctant to travel to ESPN in Bristol, Conn., to report on deadline deals because it conflicted with the Cape Cod Baseball League's All-Star game. Saturday's showcase was the first time in 10 years Gammons didn't attend, but he had a good excuse.

Yesterday he was in Cooperstown, New York to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, marking a lifetime of dedication and innovation in covering the sport he loves. Gammons was honored with the J.G. Taylor Spink Award for meritorious contributions to baseball writing.

Many of Gammons' colleagues say the honor was overdue. They say it would've come sooner had he not left print media for ESPN.

"There's no sense in having a Writers' Hall of Fame if Peter isn't in it," said Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy.

Gammons, 60, has had his Cape escape since 1992. Other than the $50,000 Mercedes in the driveway, you'd never suspect someone out of the ordinary lived there.

That's another thing: Gammons would never describe himself as different or special. At heart he's just "an ink-stained wretch," a kid who fell in love with journalism and baseball.

When he worked for the Boston Globe he had a place in Maine, but since he started at ESPN, Cape Cod seemed like a better fit. It's still a hike to Bristol, but he loves the Cape and it's celebrated baseball league.

"I always loved to see young guys develop," he said. "There's such a great atmosphere around the Cape League."

Gammons and his wife, Gloria, live in a quiet neighborhood near Red Brook and Megansett Harbors. Gloria lives here for the summer while he bounces between their home in Brookline, a hotel in Bristol, and Cataumet. During his free time, he teaches a neighborhood boy to play the guitar.

Though he's not at a baseball park every day, he's just as busy as he was when he worked at The Globe. He has an office upstairs that overlooks the water and drives hundreds of miles each week between Cape Cod and Connecticut.

His commitment to baseball, Gammons says, can be tough on his personal life. "It's a tremendous strain. My friend (and ESPN colleague) Jayson Stark said to me, 'Over the last 25 years, we've talked to each other more than we've talked to our wives.' It's very hard, but it's true of any business."

Despite all the hustle and bustle in his life, he manages to keep things simple. He is humble, and when he meets a new face, he still introduces himself as Peter Gammons, assuming the person doesn't know who he is.

"You can't walk with him at spring training," said Bob Elliott, a longtime baseball writer now with the Toronto Sun. "He'd stop and sign every autograph for every kid and meet every fan."

Early last week, between preparing his Hall of Fame acceptance speech and working the phone with general managers, he generously gave his time a young reporter. He was as eager to explain his journey through Major League Baseball as he was to be honored for it.

Gammons, the youngest of four children, grew up in Groton in central Massachusetts. His father, Edward, built organs and taught music at the prestigious Groton School. His mother, Betty, loved baseball as much as he one day would.

Gammons learned to play the guitar from his father and was a pitcher in youth baseball, but other than his 1960s rock star dreams, he thought his career path would be in politics.

"Not to run, but to be in political management," Gammons said. "I was always politically active. I would go to civil rights demonstrations."

Gammons played in a couple of bands at Groton, including the Fabulous Penetrations. He loved rock music as much as he loved baseball and his writing is sprinkled with musical lyrics and cultural references.

One of his most prized possessions is an electric guitar signed by the members of Little Feat, his favorite band. It was a gift for a recent speaking engagement he did for the Brockton Rox baseball team. Gammons plans to see Little Feat play on Nantucket in August.

Gammons, Boston Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein and Boston Herald reporter Jeff Horrigan started the Hot Stove, Cool Music charity concert series in Boston. In a July event, Gammons played in a show at Fenway Park.

Gammons attended the University of North Carolina to get away from the small-town feel of New England, he said. It was there he first became interested in journalism.

"During my freshman year I was sitting next to this guy, Curry Kirkpatrick, in a bar (the drinking age was 18) and we got into an argument about the upcoming Boston Patriots-Buffalo Bills game. He was a Bills fan and I was a Patriots fan and somehow he ended up convincing me to come work at The Daily Tar Heel."

Kirkpatrick went on to a distinguished writing and broadcasting career. Gammons left UNC after his junior year and began playing with a band at The Rat in Kenmore Square in Boston. "Some people play golf, I like to play music," he said. "My voice isn't good enough to do anything except make a lot of noise."

It wasn't for him, though. He soon returned to UNC and applied for a summer internship at The Globe. In 1968, Gammons began a long tenure at the paper alongside fellow intern (and basketball Hall of Fame writer) Bob Ryan. After his first day on the job, Gammons was certain he wanted to be a writer.

Four months after the internship ended, he was offered a full-time job by then-sports editor Fran Rosa. He accepted and left school early to pursue his dream (he later finished his degree).

Gammons began covering the Red Sox in 1971 as a backup reporter for the morning edition of The Globe. Soon, he began to excel. He'd show up at Fenway at 1 p.m. for a 7 p.m. game and he was always the last to leave.

Gammons was, and is, a people person. He was a tireless worker and he gained the trust of many players and some of the most important people in baseball.

"On the road, I'd go out and shag fly balls or pitch batting practice," Gammons said. "At most clubhouses, they'd have my name on a locker.

"Carl Yastrzemski would tell me where to stand and he'd hit all the balls right to me and then he'd come out and explain to me exactly what he was trying to do. It was cathartic for him."

In 1972 Gammons began writing a Sunday baseball notes column for The Globe that was like nothing else in the newspaper business. It was one of the most widely read articles in the country and was eventually imitated by every major league beat writer.

"I think it was clear around the business Peter was doing his homework," said Vince Doria, a former Boston Globe sports editor who is now a vice president at ESPN. "A lot of guys do a lot of good shoe-leather reporting and then at some point, guys don't want to get their hands as dirty. Peter wrote columns, but he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty."

Doria said Gammons' phone bills at the Globe were three times any other reporter's.

Gammons continued to cover the Red Sox until 1976 and became The Globe's first baseball columnist.

His game story from the sixth game of the 1975 World Series between the Red Sox and the Cincinnati Reds is now a legend throughout sports journalism. As the story goes, Gammons wrote it in 15 minutes on deadline, yet captured the moment like a poet.

In 1976, Gammons decided to try something different by moving to Sports Illustrated to cover the National Hockey League.

"I missed baseball a lot," Gammons said. "I did not have the newspaper, the everyday thing out of my blood. I had to go back."

He missed it so much he still spent a lot of time around ballparks. Shaughnessy remembers Gammons showing up in the Fenway Park press box and feeding him tidbits of information for the Sunday notes column, which Shaughnessy had taken over.

"He shared everything," Shaughnessy said. "He shared information and phone numbers, he was always willing to help. When I started, I relied on him heavily."

Gammons returned to The Globe in 1978, but left again for a second stint at SI in 1986, this time to cover baseball.

In 1988, Gammons began to split time between SI and his new job as a TV analyst for ESPN. Like longtime Globe football guru, Will McDonough, the information he acquired was too good for TV to pass up.

Gammons' success began a trend of the best print reporters in the country moving into television.

Ned Gammons misses the old version of his brother, the one that covered the Red Sox and had at least two stories every day in The Globe.

"It's too bad that some of his best writing has been overlooked because there's hardly anybody who didn't read those blasted notes," said Ned, now a retired minister in Rhode Island. "He was really good at writing game stories. The first game story he ever wrote was some of his best writing."

Ned has a scrapbook his mother, Betty, started in the 1960s. It contains what he considers Peter's best writing and he occasionally adds to it, though Peter writes mostly online now.

Still, he knows the Peter Gammons who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame yesterday is a writer, not a TV analyst. Gammons' acceptance speech in Cooperstown was proof of that.

For all the technology of cell phones and laptops and 24-hour instant news, he rose to the moment and captured his career with elegant writing.

"I can remember sending a story from a Western Union office. They had these little machines like copy machines that would send them out. It was a long way off from laptops," Gammons said. "When I go into the Hall of Fame, I'm going as an ink-stained wretch."