2024-Jayson Stark

Jayson Stark grew up in Philadelphia dreaming of becoming a sportswriter. He has worked all of his adult life making that dream a reality.

Jayson has been a senior writer for The Athletic since 2018. Before joining The Athletic, he covered baseball for ESPN for 17 years and at the Philadelphia Inquirer for the previous 21 years. He also worked at the Providence Journal for five years following his graduation from Syracuse University. He has been a longtime presence on TV as well, most recently as an insider for MLB Network.

Jayson was the 2019 winner of the BBWAA’s Career Excellence Award and was honored that summer at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

In his profile on the Hall of Fame’s website, he was described as “a curator for all things weird, wacky, unique, statistically inclined and historically rare in the game.” His popular “Weird and Wild” column at the Athletic is a regular collection of notes, quotes, numbers, oddities and laughs.

In his previous stops at ESPN.com and the Philadelphia Inquirer, he was the creator and author of the nationally syndicated “Baseball Week in Review” column, where he first began looking at baseball in the irreverent style for which he is so well known.

While working at the Inquirer, Jayson was twice named as the NSMA’s Pennsylvania Sportswriter of the Year. He was a 2019 inductee into the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame and was honored by the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2017. He was honored in 2010 by Penn State’s Foster Conference for Distinguished Writers, for his books and other work. He also appeared in the 2014 film, “Million Dollar Arm,” starring Jon Hamm.

Jayson is the author of three books, “Wild Pitches: Rumblings, Grumblings and Reflections on the Game I Love” (Triumph Books, 2014), “The Stark Truth: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players in Baseball History” (Triumph Books, 2006) and “Worth The Wait: Tales of the 2008 Phillies” (Triumph Books, 2009). And in 2018, Topps issued an actual Jayson Stark baseball card.

Jayson lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife, Lisa. They have three children: Steven, Jessica and Hali.

He was inducted into the NSMA Hall of Fame on July 1st, 2024.