Peter Gammons Suffers Brain Aneurysm

Here's hoping to a speedy recovery for ESPN's Peter Gammons, arguably baseball's premier journalist, as he is undergoing emergency surgery in a Boston-area hospital for a brain aneurysm. Gammons has written many stories that touch on the law, although his introduction speech into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2004 may be his greatest work. Here's an excerpt:

I walked the streets of Manoguyabo, Dominican Republic, with Pedro Martinez and viewed the churches, school, athletic complex, day-care center and houses that he built for poor people in his hometown. I was not far from Fidel Castro when he stood for the American National Anthem at attention, his hat across his heart because baseball came to Havana in 1989. I remember George Bush strode out toward the mound at Yankee Stadium before the third game of the 2001 World Series, weeks removed from the World Trade Center attacks, and turned and said to Karl Ravech and Harold Reynolds, 'We are among the 55,000 people who just experienced one of the great chills of anyone's lifetime.' When Bud Selig asked us to embrace the World Cup, it's not T-shirts in Taiwan. It's about celebrating that baseball, more than any sport, is who we are. It is reflected in our immigration patterns, our history because we're all immigrants. We should want the world to see us not for our politics, not for our business, but for baseball as our metamorphic soul, inclusive, not exclusive, diverse, not divisive, fraternal, not fractionalized.

Gammons may very well be the best sports journalist in my lifetime. Whether you agree or disagree with him, he's always interesting, and that alone separates him from everyone else. I'm looking forward to reading more of his work. Get well.

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