WORCESTER—For one perfect summer Saturday afternoon, the Baseball Hall of Fame relocated 200 miles east of Cooperstown.
Two Hall of Fame baseball writers, Peter Gammons and Dan Shaughnessy, spent part of the afternoon talking to fans at Polar Park’s DCU Club and answering their questions as part of the WooSox’ Great Writers Series.
They stayed at the park long enough to watch the Worcester Red Sox snap a three-game losing streak by beating Jacksonville, 6-5.
Both were born and raised in Groton which, when they were growing up, had a population of about 4,000. Gammons is eight years older than Shaughnessy so they were not playmates, but there are no strangers in a town of 4,000. The small-town connection helped Shaughnessy get started.
While he was young, contemplating a career in sportswriting, his mother told him, “You know, the Gammons boy writes about baseball.”
Shaughnessy responded, saying, “Really? That guy? We know him? So I called the Gammons boy, left a message and we got together.”
Things progressed from there.
“After that, anywhere I needed help, Peter Gammons was there,” Shaughnessy said. “Everything I have and got is because I knew Peter Gammons because that Gammons boy was in Groton.”
The craft of baseball writing was re-invented by Gammons at the Boston Globe. He is to baseball writing what Bobby Orr is to hockey, Arnold Palmer to golf, what Caitlin Clark is to women’s basketball.
Shaughnessy no longer does baseball on a daily basis, but used that as a platform to become one of the leading columnists in the business. He is one of a only a few remaining whose columns are more than glorified features, who leaves readers wanting to strangle him.
Players, too, on occasion.
Gammons has often been referred to as “The Commissioner” because his influence is so overwhelming. The argument can be made that without Gammons suggesting he would be right for Boston, Larry Lucchino would never have been part of Red Sox ownership.
Without Lucchino, the argument could be made that the Red Sox would not have won four World Series in this century. Without Lucchino, it is certain that there would be no Polar Park.
Shaughnessy added some background on how Lucchino came to own part of the Red Sox along with John Henry, neither of whom knew each other at first. Commissioner Bud Selig played a major role very deeply behind the scenes.
“Bud’s great quote to me was,” Shaughnessy said, “I told him that this was a bag job, you put these guys together and they end up with the team. It was not fair.
“And he goes, ‘Well, I had nothing to do with that Dan but some day you’re gonna thank me for it.”
Both men answered questions from the audience and WooSox president Dr. Charles Steinberg, who served as host.
Some of those highlights:
Bill Lee was, per Gammons, “Always a little goofy, but it was fun. His teammates got tired of it.”
Shaughnessy said, “He’s been on my porch twice in the last year and my wife’s got him on the no-fly list. The first night he brought the dog, tore up the furniture, stole stuff…it’s all true.”
Lee told him that Ted Williams was truly the greatest hitter who ever lived because, “He hit on all three of my wives.”
Saturday was Gammons’ first visit to Polar Park and considering who designed it, he said, “It doesn’t surprise me at all that this has been such a great success.”
He and Shaughnessy covered their first game together in 1973 and it was at Fitton Field, a Syracuse-Holy Cross football game. Gammons was working for the Globe. Shaughnessy was working for the school paper. Syracuse won by the bizarre score of 5-3.
“Of course there’s a safety involved in a 5-3 game,” Shaughnessy said, “and it was a bad snap by the Holy Cross center. Gammons said, ‘Syracuse defeated Holy Cross, 5-3. The winning runs were scored on a throwing error by the Holy Cross center.”
Both were asked about baseball’s proposed expansion. Gammons said perhaps Nashville and Austin, Texas, but has doubts that there are any viable major league markets left. After all, two big league teams are playing in minor league ballparks as it is.
“I’m more about losing the ones that we have,” said Shaughnessy, proposing contraction as a better outcome.
The baseball world Gammons entered in the late 1960s was a different one for writers. He got to pitch batting practice on road trips. He shagged fly balls for Carl Yastrzemski, had almost unlimited access to clubhouses. Today, players put gloves over their mouths during mound conferences as if they were discussing nuclear cods.
Both think that both Lucchino and Janet Marie Smith belong in Cooperstown. Both are fond of two city guys in the WooSox Hall of Fame, Rich Gedman and J.P. Ricciardi.
“There is no question,” Gammons said, “That Rich Gedman was the Most Valuable Player in the Sox beating the Angels in the ’86 playoffs. He was a good hitter, but he was tremendous wth pitchers….Rogers Clemens says the best catcher he ever had was Rich Gedman.”
Shaughnessy said, “He’s a self-made guy, comes from not a lot of privilege and winds up being this great major league catcher. We all loved him. He’s a standup guy, a baseball guy.”
Gammons used to travel here to watch Holy Name basketball games when Ricciardi coached there.
“J.P. loves players, particularly shortstops, who move like point guards,” Gammons said.
More behind the scenes stuff from the Gammons boy, who is a Hall of Famer because of that kind of insight, and who also helped a young writer take his first steps towards Cooperstown.
Bill Ballou covered the Red Sox for the Worcester Telegram from 1997 through 2018. He has covered pro hockey in Worcester since 1994 and currently does a weekly column for the Worcester Red Sox. Ballou can be reached at vetgoalie@aol.com
