Jayson Stark grew up in Northeast Philadelphia dreaming of becoming a sportswriter. He has worked all of his adult life making that dream a reality.
After spending 21 years covering baseball for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Stark moved on to ESPN in 2000. For the next 17 years, he worked as a senior baseball writer for ESPN.com, making regular television appearances on Baseball Tonight, SportsCenter and Outside the Lines. A regular ESPN Radio guest of Mike and Mike, he contributed his famous weekly trivia question and was a guest on numerous other shows on the network.
From a very young age and throughout his youth, Stark’s family was amazed by, and consistently supportive of, his love for sports, especially baseball. Eventually his passion both for sports and writing led him to Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications where numerous sportswriters and sportscasters are among their most famous alumni.
Stark arrived at the Inquirer as the Phillies beat writer just in time to cover the 1980 World Series winners. When he became a baseball columnist at the newspaper, he created a popular weekly column Week in Review which chronicled the fun and wacky side of baseball.
He also became part of the Philadelphia radio and TV scene, first as part of the Morning Sports Page show on WIP, then as a panelist on the Great Sports Debate and later as part of the Phillies pregame shows with Scott Graham on 1210 AM. He is a weekly guest of Mike Missanelli on Philadelphia’s ESPN affiliate 97.5, The Fanatic. Twice named Pennsylvania’s sportswriter of the year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association, Stark also won several awards from the Associated Press Sports Editors for stories he wrote at the Inquirer.
Stark authored three books, “Wild Pitches: Rumblings, Grumblings and Reflections on the Game I Love”, “The Stark Truth: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players in Baseball History” and “Worth the Wait: Tales of the 2008 Phillies”. In 2010, he was honored by Penn State’s Foster Conference for Distinguished Writers for the many books and articles he has written. He was a finalist for the National Sports Media Association’s National Sportswriter of the Year award in 2017.
