Peter Gammons

[Dr. Jack]

HAs anyone heard anything more about his health and how or if he is recovering?

[upinya83]

Article from a couple days ago:

Peter Gammons woke up the morning after his brain surgery.

He knew his name and his birthday and the company for whom he works. The doctors said those were good signs, although Peter remains in intensive care, and no one has a clear idea what damage the aneurysm did.

You knew it was serious because Gammons didn't immediately grab a phone, and he didn't begin extolling the gifts of the third baseman for the Portland Sea Dogs, Boston's Double-A affiliate. We assume all of that will return in time.

Gammons is the lead baseball analyst and reporter for ESPN. Before that he wrote for Sports Illustrated and, more importantly, he covered the Red Sox on a daily basis for the Boston Globe. Last year he joined the writers' wing of the Hall of Fame.

Television did not add 10 pounds to Gammons. What it did was neutralize him. Gammons sits behind a desk or, in some cases, stands in front of a ballpark camera, and you don't see the fervid tapping of the foot or the shaking of the leg, and you don't see the glint in his eye when he realizes he is the first to realize some odd baseball truth.

As Bob Ryan, the Globe columnist, said many years ago, "I've never known anyone who has ever loved anything as much as Peter Gammons loves baseball."

Gammons has a summer house on Cape Cod. It's hard to imagine him on a boogie board. More often he is attending games of the Cape Cod League, where college kids work summer jobs and perform with a wood bat.

He was forever delighted to tell people that the local grocery store had made the industrious Darin Erstad the Employee Of The Month one summer.

Last week, Peter was driving to the gym for his morning workout (at 61, he is in superb shape). He pulled over and called his wife, Gloria, and he was taken to a Falmouth, Mass., hospital, from where he was airlifted to Boston.

Gammons' illness is front-page stuff in Boston, where the obsession with the Red Sox can be partially traced to him. He covered them with what can only be called passionate dispassion.

He covered the '75 Series, the Carlton Fisk stay-fair home run, and the aimless years that followed. Then came another Game 6, in 1986, and when the ball rolled through Bill Buckner's legs it left a hole in the soul of New England. His SI summation was a classic of stoic heartbreak, like blood seeping through Curt Schilling's sock, and at the end he recalled his father, Ned, telling him, "The Red Sox will win the World Series in your lifetime."

In 2004 it happened, and Gammons reveled in the invasion of fun that swamped Fenway Park.

"The night they won the wild card, people were chasing Kevin Millar down the street and he was still in uniform," Gammons was saying during those playoffs. "Chased him right into a bar where he started serving. It was like 'A Hard Days' Night.'"

Of course, music is right up there with baseball for Peter. His dad was the choirmaster at Groton School. Gammons laced his stories with rock-n-roll analogies and was always looking for the next Little Feat or Bonnie Raitt concert.

Why all the hoopla for a mere messenger? Sports writers should write about remarkable lives, not their own.

But Gammons matters because he single-handedly changed the way baseball is covered.

He was the inventor of the endless notes column, in which no player, no statistic, no anecdote, no observation was too obscure. He worked the clubhouse - both clubhouses - to staggering effect.

Through Gammons we learned that Dennis Eckersley had reinvented the language of baseball - gas, taking gas, cheese, yakker, the walk-off piece. We learned Bill Lee said things like, "The difference between grass and Astroturf is that you can't smoke Astroturf" and "What comes around comes around. You know who said that? Ferdinand Magellan."

The clannish Boston writers despised Gammons initially. Some never overcame it. Instead of writing play-by-play and boozing with the manager, Gammons connected with young players and wrote about the way games smelled and sounded.

Now it's true that Gammons and Sparky Anderson have this in common: Both believe wholeheartedly in whatever they're believing today. Finding a contradiction in Gammons' day-to-day work is not difficult. But that's baseball. It changes every day and so does Peter.

Most of all, Gammons throbs with enthusiasm. You don't find much of it in the cheerless newspaper business of today. He knows the difference between skepticism and cynicism. There are no empty games for Gammons. As hitters would say, he never gives up an at-bat.

Presumably, Peter will be more and more cogent. Maybe he'll tell the doctors he doesn't really want to hit the ballparks in October.

If so, wheel him back into surgery. Stat.

[RollTide]

amen god bless peter baseball is better for him not without him!

[Dr. Jack]

thanks up

[Gerk]

Will be returning to ESPN tonight