लेखक: D. B. FIRSTMAN

JAYSON STARK is the 2019 winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award for “meritorious contributions to baseball writing” and was presented with the award in Cooperstown during the Hall of Fame”s annual induction weekend. In addition to his work at MLB Network, he is also a senior baseball writer at The Athletic and the host of “Baseball Stories” on Stadium TV. In his profile on the Hall of Fame”s website following the Spink Award announcement, Stark was described as “a curator for all things weird, wacky, unique, statistically inclined and historically rare in the game.” His popular Useless Information column at the Athletic is a regular collection of notes, quotes, numbers, oddities and laughs. And 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, which looked at the sport in a similar irreverent vein. Stark spent 17 years covering baseball for ESPN and ESPN.com. Besides writing columns for the website, he made numerous television appearances on Baseball Tonight, Sports Center and Outside the Lines, and won an Emmy for his work on Baseball Tonight. He was also a regular guest on Mike and Mike, where he contributed his famous weekly trivia question. Stark previously spent 21 years covering baseball for the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he was twice named Pennsylvania Sportswriter of the Year. He appears regularly on radio stations around the country and formerly hosted The Jayson Stark Show on 97.5 The Fanatic in Philadelphia. He 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). In May of 2017, he was inducted into the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. He is a finalist for the 2019 National Sports Media Association”s national-sportswriter-of-the-year award. He also appeared in the 2014 film, Million Dollar Arm, starring Jon Hamm. And in 2018, Topps issued an actual Jayson Stark baseball card.