The Great Peter Gammons Leaving ESPN

The great Peter Gammons is leaving ESPN.

My decision to leave ESPN and move on at this point in my life has been conflicted,” said Gammons in a statement. “I owe a great deal of my professional life to ESPN, having spent more than half of my 40 years in journalism working for the network, and the choice to move on was made with nothing but the strongest feelings for the people with whom I worked. ESPN gave me a great deal more than I gave it, and will always be a huge part of who I am.”

ESPN says Gammons is leaving to pursue future endeavors.

I idolize very few people in this world, but Peter Gammons is one of them. While studying Sports Management at UMass, Gammons was the guy I wanted to be.

He was the most respected writer and analyst in baseball. He changed the way baseball was covered and his articles were always must reads.

Gammons is one of the main reasons I write today.

I remember in college, my roommate Odie had a subscription to the Sunday Boston Globe—I really just showed my age with that one. When the Globe came to our apartment, we used to run or move briskly (there was very little running in our apartment on a Sunday morning) to the door in order to be the first one to read Gammons’ Sunday article—true story.

At the time, Gammons was the only credible insider. His Sunday article gave us information that we couldn’t get anywhere else. Today, there are hundreds of insiders thanks to people like Gammons.

ESPN said Gammons is leaving to "pursue future endeavors," which means other opportunities. It doesn’t sound like Gammons is going to retire.

My guess is Gammons ends up in either of two places—the MLB Network or NESN.

Could you imagine if he ended up at the MLB Network? Tom Verducci, Jon Heyman, Ken Rosenthal, and Gammons all on the same network. That is baseball geekdom at its best.

You can follow The Ghost of Moonlight Graham on Twitter @ theghostofmlg