Peter Gammons Leaving ESPN

Peter Gammons and Shaun Breen It’s the biggest baseball-related signing this off-season. Peter Gammons is leaving ESPN at the end of the week for the MLB Network and NESN.

A few years back, I met-up with Peter Gammons at Legends Field in Tampa, Florida at a Yankees spring training game. For about a half hour, I stood nearby, patiently waiting for him to hang up his cell phone. He actually kept talking on the phone during the National Anthem. That surprised me. I have no idea who he was talking to, possibly an ESPN Radio host.

Once he hung up, I approached him, and he was extremely friendly. We talked for a few minutes, he posed for a couple of photos, and autographed a couple of baseballs (this was before the MLW Staff and I started carrying wiffleballs around).

I asked him how closely he read ESPN The Magazine. He admitted, “Not very close.” I explained that I had been mentioned in a very short blurb in the August 6, 2001 issue about breaking the Major League Wiffleball home run record. He called me, “the Barry Bonds of wiffleball.” Well, at the time it was a compliment. I would have preferred Mark McGwire.

Peter Gammons is a good guy, and a baseball Hall of Famer. We’re all going to miss seeing him on ESPN, but MLW wishes him the best of luck at MLB Network and NESN, and hopes that he’ll still be making occasional appearances on ESPN Radio.