Cooperstown, New York is the home of baseball’s immortal legends of the game. A place in which the greats from Ty Cobb to Babe Ruth; Tom Seaver to Pedro Martinez; Ted Williams to Jackie Robinson – and more are enshrined. Approximately 1% of all players who have taken the field at the major-league level have been granted membership into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
This is more than just a building; it is a pinnacle of achievement in the game of baseball – and it recognizes more than just former players. Throughout the museum, commissioners, front office staff, coaches and other team and league personnel are honored for the contributions they have made to America’s Pastime, and artifacts from all facets of the game are on display. That, of course, includes within media, and as the means of distribution and content demands have shifted over the years, those working in the profession have adapted to find new and innovative ways to cover the game both on and off of the diamond.
One of those members of the media – Tim Kurkjian – was honored this weekend by receiving the highest honor bestowed by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA): its career excellence award. Kurkjian has worked in the game of baseball for over four decades, developing an affinity for the sport from the time he was a child. But at that time, he never thought he would be reporting about the game across multiple platforms despite having ambitions in journalism.
Kurkjian attended Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland, the eponymous education locale named in honor of former Washington Senators starting pitcher Walter Johnson. Fittingly so, the school newspaper was named The Pitch, and Kurkjian contributed to the publication throughout his time there, serving as both a writer and the sports editor. At the time, Kurkjian was a novice in journalism but possessed a deft knowledge about baseball, empowering him to continue to pursue his dream of working within the walls of a ballpark even when times became difficult.
“I was a terrible writer in high school,” Kurkjian said. “After one especially bad story, one of my gym teachers told me: ‘Tim, that might be the worst story I ever read in the school paper. I hope you’re not planning on making this your life’s work.’”
Baseball was the vernacular for Kurkjian as a child, especially with his dad and brothers having played the sport. While he played both baseball and basketball at points in his childhood, he knew that it was unlikely he would ever make it professionally – not because of not possessing enough passion for sports. Instead, he felt he was simply too small, graduating high school at 5-foot-2 and weighing 110 lbs.
Through repetition, persistence and a determination to succeed, Kurkjian eventually made it to the big leagues as a writer – but not after several different stops along the way. Just as basketball legend Michael Jordan was left off of his high school varsity team and Orel Hershiser was cut from both his high school and college baseball teams, Tim Kurkjian experienced plenty of rejection early in his career. In his freshman year at the University of Maryland, he applied to write for the college’s newspaper The Diamondback, and was rejected. The next year, he re-applied and was rejected again. That pattern held for both his junior and senior years of college, leaving Kurkjian no choice but to find an opportunity off of the school campus.
“Instead of showing up every day to say ‘I need to work here,’ I just kind of said, ‘Alright, if you don’t want me, I’ll go and work somewhere else,’” Kurkjian said. “I went to The Montgomery Journal [and] it was critical that I got to write as much as I did.”
“It’s like anything else,” Kurkjian affirmed. “If you want to be a great free throw shooter, you have to shoot a lot of free throws. If you want to be a great shortstop, you’ve got to take a lot of ground balls. If you want to learn how to write, you’ve got to write as much as possible. That’s what The Montgomery Journal gave me was a chance to write, and I took it.”
After graduating college in 1978 with a journalism degree, Kurkjian was resolute in his pursuit of a job in journalism, so much so that he pleaded with management at The Washington Star to be hired by following up with the publication eight times. His final attempt was successful. He was hired to cover high school sports as a freelancer; however, he also answered phones, ran errands late at night and documented game statistics, scores and sports news. Kurkjian did whatever it took to succeed in sports journalism, learning mostly through observation and recurrence.
In January 1981, Kurkjian was brought on as a full-time staff member reporting on sports, an exciting and rewarding moment in his career. By August of that year though, the newspaper had gone out of business and Kurkjian was unemployed. While he was quickly able to pick up another job writing at The Baltimore News-American, that newspaper also folded a mere two months later because of financial shortcomings.
Thankfully for Kurkjian, his former boss at The Washington Star had landed a new job as the sports editor at The Dallas Morning News, and he was able to offer Kurkjian a sports reporting job that eventually transitioned into being the publication’s beat reporter for the Texas Rangers beginning in the 1982 season. In this role, he was replacing Skip Bayless, who had recently switched publications, and began the daily routine of following a team, interviewing its personnel and spending long days at Arlington Stadium and on the road.
Before the 1986 season, Kurkjian moved back to Baltimore, to cover the Baltimore Orioles as a beat writer for The Baltimore Sun, a role he would keep through the 1989 season. Even though the team was not always the most exciting to cover in terms of its success on the field, Kurkjian began evolving into even more of a sought-after talent and continued to enhance his career as a journalist. In fact, from the 1982 season-on, Kurkjian has had the opportunity to cover every World Series game for the outlets by which he was employed.
“It was the greatest job I’ve ever had; it was the hardest job I’ve ever had, and it prepared me for every other job I’ve ever had since then,” Kurkjian said of working as a beat writer. “It was so difficult because you’re away from home all the time, and even when you are home, you’re at the ballpark every night. You’re writing four stories a day; you’re writing on deadline; the pressure is enormous especially with the competition of the other newspapers. Once you do that, I think you can do anything else in this business.”
Following the conclusion of the 1989 Orioles season, Kurkjian was hired by Sports Illustrated (SI) as a baseball writer, continuing to cover the players, coaches and other personalities associated with the game. By 1997, Sports Illustrated and CNN had merged to create a sports news network called “CNN/SI,” and Kurkjian and his colleagues were delivered a message straight from upper management.
“The SI people told the writers, including me: ‘All you guys are on TV now,’” Kurkjian said. “I said: ‘I don’t want to do TV.’ They said: ‘You don’t have a choice – we’re doing TV now.’”
And thus, Kurkjian’s career as a television analyst and reporter began, requiring him to learn on the job how to transition his sports reporting, generally written and edited, into transferable, multi-platform content. One year later, Kurkjian made the move to ESPN to serve as a senior writer and a reporter for Baseball Tonight and expected to finally receive the assistance he was anticipating to learn how to work in television.
“I just assumed when I got to ESPN that they would tell me: ‘Okay, we’re going to teach you how to do television,’” Kurkjian said. “[Instead,] they said: ‘Look, there’s no time. You’re a reporter; you’re a writer; you know how to do this,’ and bang, I was on TV every day.”
Kurkjian credits his time working as a baseball beat writer for allowing him to seamlessly make the transition to television, notably his ability to write on deadline. In that instance, the ability to disclose information in a clear and concise manner, while also continuing to remain precise, accurate and fair, was a challenge he was acutely aware of and ready to take on.
“Get to the point and get out of there,” said Kurkjian. “That’s what TV teaches you – efficiency. But I’ve learned to love TV because it’s so spontaneous. For a newspaper, I’d have to wait until the next morning to see my work; at SI, I’d have to wait a whole week to see my work. Now on television, I can weigh in on a World Series game right now, and there’s something really cool about that.”
Journalists who have risen through the industry prior to significant development in the digital age are almost always finding ways to build their own brand and disseminate their content across multiple platforms, regardless if it is written or spoken. Peter Gammons, who began his career at The Boston Globe before moving to Sports Illustrated and ESPN, was, according to Kurkjian, the first writer to appear as a contributor on television while still writing, a practice that has become common.
“To me, Peter is the greatest baseball writer of all-time, and I can’t even begin to tell you the influence he had on me,” Kurkjian said. “….I’ve kind of followed Peter around – and my thinking there is: ‘There’s no better person to follow around than Peter Gammons.’”
As his time at ESPN continued, Kurkjian hosted a special edition of SportsCenter featuring two other baseball writers, Buster Olney and Jayson Stark, to report the news from the perspective of those who work in the press box. Working with both Olney and Stark, Kurkjian learned how to better dissect box scores and be more deft in searching for interesting statistics or notes about the game. From there, he had the opportunity to work on both Wednesday Night Baseball and Monday Night Baseball, and has contributed to Little League World Series coverage across the network, taking his talents into the broadcast booth and, sometimes, adjacent to the dugout.
“I just love being a part of a baseball broadcast because you’re in on every pitch,” said Kurkjian. “….I just hope I get more and more opportunities to do that. I do games on the radio too, [and] I’ve loved every bit of that because I grew up listening to games on the radio like every other dinky little kid in the ‘60s with a transistor radio to my ear.”
This past Sunday, Kurkjian’s family got to watch him receive the honor of a lifetime when he accepted the 2022 BBWAA Career Excellence Award in Cooperstown, officially cementing his place among the legends of the game. Learning he won the award constituted a moment he would never forget, especially receiving the news from former Cincinnati Reds catcher and Hall of Famer Johnny Bench, and the weekend was surely emotional and memorable.
“It’s the greatest achievement of my professional career, and there is not a close second; there will never be a close second,” Kurkjian stated. “This is the greatest honor that a writer can achieve, and to be on the same list with so many great writers over the years from Shirley Povich to Roger Angell to my dear, dear friends Dan Shaughnessy, Peter Gammons, Jayson Stark, Rick Hummel – all these guys. There are so many days that I just wake up thinking: ‘This can’t be happening to me.’”
As the game of baseball continues to evolve in its presentation and style of play, Kurkjian hopes that fans appreciate the action on the field rather than being distracted by other debates or small details, including sabermetrics and player valuation. The atmosphere of the ballpark and the unpredictability of the action have nurtured Kurkjian’s love of the game for so many years and it has been the catalyst for all of his other endeavors, including authoring three books.
“I think it’s so critical that we never lose sight that the games are all that truly matters,” Kurkjian said. “….Nothing makes me happier than being at the ballpark and watching a game, and now calling a game or writing about a game. It is still why baseball is the greatest – is the games separate themselves.”
For aspiring journalists who look to cement themselves in the sports media industry, showing up and working hard may seem jaded pieces of advice, but their importance truly cannot be overstated enough. The differentiating factor for Kurkjian that comes from his innate proclivity towards baseball is his curiosity to learn more and be scholastic in his reporting. The writing figured itself out in the end and now Kurkjian is immortalized in a village in upstate New York that oozes a passion and love for the game.
“When something happens, ask yourself: ‘What happened there? When’s the last time I saw that? I need to understand that,’” Kurkjian said. “Then, go ask somebody, preferably the manager or a player: ‘What happened on that play? I need to learn about this.’ That’s the most important thing beyond being prepared and working hard – all the clichés – and it’s just [to] be curious. Open up your eyes and open up your ears to what’s going on around you. You’ll learn an awful lot if you keep doing that.”
