Jimcs50
08-01-2005, 12:59 PM
Baseball Hall of Fame
Steve Job's advice at that time to a graduating class of Stanford this year was "find what you love". I am here today because I found what I love. Understand I grew up in a household where when I got home from school my mother greeted me with, can you believe they traded Jim Piersall for Vic Wertz and Gary Geiger".
Ned weaned me on respect and reverence for the history and texture of the game. My sister Anne hit me fungoes in a small New England town where the Red Sox Home opener was an acceptable legal excuse to leave school at ten a.m.. My father found what he loved in music and teaching and the goodness of man. He and Paul Wright, my godfather, teacher and mentor remain the two greatest men I have ever known. Teachers like Juney O'Brien and Jake Congleton by the time I was 18 I knew my role models and my life's mission statement were defined.
When this award was announced, Mike Barnicle left me a simple message. "Tom Winship would be very proud". Winship was the editor of the Boston Globe, a Branch Rickey of a man who changed the newspaper business in Boston and opened a world for kids who were dying for chance. Mine came as a summer intern in December of 1968. It started the day Robert F. Kennedy we was shot. In those days you had a morning Globe and afternoon Globe, and when I walked in, I was introduced to my fellow intern Bob Ryan, basketball Hall of Famer. We were told to call every team in business asked them what they would do for Robert F. Kennedy and write a story. We did. The 3:30 late stocks edition came up, and there on the front page of the entire paper Mr. Ryan and Mr. Gammons had their first by lines. We went to the Erie Pub, raised a couple of 10 cent drafts and decided, you know, what we found what we loved.
My career essentially has been very simple, Boston Globe, Sports Illustrated, S.I, ESPN. I have been fortunate enough to work for extraordinary people. There are hundreds, maybe thousands who I should thank, but it was Tom Winship and Fran Rosa who stuck their neck out to hire a kid who hadn't even graduated from college. Mark Mulvoy, who hired me twice at Sports Illustrated. Vince Doria, who brought me back to the Globe and anyone who I ever worked for believes is the best sports editor, if not the best boss who ever lived. John Walsh who had the crackbrained idea to bring a sportswriter into television because, as one of the businesses most creative visionaries, he understood that information is king. I am very proud to say today much of what ESPN is today is because of John Walsh and there are hundreds of people that have gone and followed me out of the print profession to follow a need to ESPN because of Walsh. I am not here as a television personality, but as an ink stained wretch. Publishers and new editors have no clue. They have no understanding that the baseball beat is the toughest beat in the newspaper business. It means severe personal sacrifices. A few years ago Jason Stark and I decided that over a 25-year period we probably talked to one another more than we talked to our wives and no one has sacrificed more than my wife Gloria who saved me in an unpredictable storm of a business that knows no holidays.
The baseball beat today is much tougher now than when I was traveling with Red Sox for the Globe. There is far less access, ten times the bodies in the clubhouse. The Internet, radio, television have broadened the baseball information universe. And yet our business, I am proud to say, keeps producing generation after generation of young reporters who are tireless, good, and fair. Throughout my career I have tried to be guided by one principle, that because I am human I have the right to like people. But because I am professional, I have no right to dislike any one. People ask me, as a New England, what was it like walking out there in the field when Aaron Boone hit a home run. To be honest, my first reaction was, I was ecstatic. I have known Aaron Boone since he was 13 years old and that's my privilege. My second reaction, I saw Tim Wakefield, head down, and I felt despondent. He's one man who did not deserve that. As I walked out on the field to try to get introduced, I turned to my producer, Charlie Moynihan, and said, "look around here, you know what? I just got paid to cover the greatest game ever played in the greatest sporting venue in the world. I think I'm the luckiest man on earth."
Continued...
Steve Job's advice at that time to a graduating class of Stanford this year was "find what you love". I am here today because I found what I love. Understand I grew up in a household where when I got home from school my mother greeted me with, can you believe they traded Jim Piersall for Vic Wertz and Gary Geiger".
Ned weaned me on respect and reverence for the history and texture of the game. My sister Anne hit me fungoes in a small New England town where the Red Sox Home opener was an acceptable legal excuse to leave school at ten a.m.. My father found what he loved in music and teaching and the goodness of man. He and Paul Wright, my godfather, teacher and mentor remain the two greatest men I have ever known. Teachers like Juney O'Brien and Jake Congleton by the time I was 18 I knew my role models and my life's mission statement were defined.
When this award was announced, Mike Barnicle left me a simple message. "Tom Winship would be very proud". Winship was the editor of the Boston Globe, a Branch Rickey of a man who changed the newspaper business in Boston and opened a world for kids who were dying for chance. Mine came as a summer intern in December of 1968. It started the day Robert F. Kennedy we was shot. In those days you had a morning Globe and afternoon Globe, and when I walked in, I was introduced to my fellow intern Bob Ryan, basketball Hall of Famer. We were told to call every team in business asked them what they would do for Robert F. Kennedy and write a story. We did. The 3:30 late stocks edition came up, and there on the front page of the entire paper Mr. Ryan and Mr. Gammons had their first by lines. We went to the Erie Pub, raised a couple of 10 cent drafts and decided, you know, what we found what we loved.
My career essentially has been very simple, Boston Globe, Sports Illustrated, S.I, ESPN. I have been fortunate enough to work for extraordinary people. There are hundreds, maybe thousands who I should thank, but it was Tom Winship and Fran Rosa who stuck their neck out to hire a kid who hadn't even graduated from college. Mark Mulvoy, who hired me twice at Sports Illustrated. Vince Doria, who brought me back to the Globe and anyone who I ever worked for believes is the best sports editor, if not the best boss who ever lived. John Walsh who had the crackbrained idea to bring a sportswriter into television because, as one of the businesses most creative visionaries, he understood that information is king. I am very proud to say today much of what ESPN is today is because of John Walsh and there are hundreds of people that have gone and followed me out of the print profession to follow a need to ESPN because of Walsh. I am not here as a television personality, but as an ink stained wretch. Publishers and new editors have no clue. They have no understanding that the baseball beat is the toughest beat in the newspaper business. It means severe personal sacrifices. A few years ago Jason Stark and I decided that over a 25-year period we probably talked to one another more than we talked to our wives and no one has sacrificed more than my wife Gloria who saved me in an unpredictable storm of a business that knows no holidays.
The baseball beat today is much tougher now than when I was traveling with Red Sox for the Globe. There is far less access, ten times the bodies in the clubhouse. The Internet, radio, television have broadened the baseball information universe. And yet our business, I am proud to say, keeps producing generation after generation of young reporters who are tireless, good, and fair. Throughout my career I have tried to be guided by one principle, that because I am human I have the right to like people. But because I am professional, I have no right to dislike any one. People ask me, as a New England, what was it like walking out there in the field when Aaron Boone hit a home run. To be honest, my first reaction was, I was ecstatic. I have known Aaron Boone since he was 13 years old and that's my privilege. My second reaction, I saw Tim Wakefield, head down, and I felt despondent. He's one man who did not deserve that. As I walked out on the field to try to get introduced, I turned to my producer, Charlie Moynihan, and said, "look around here, you know what? I just got paid to cover the greatest game ever played in the greatest sporting venue in the world. I think I'm the luckiest man on earth."
Continued...