Jayson Stark

Jayson Stark is a Hall of Fame award-winning writer and insider appearing across MLB Network’s programming, including the Emmy Award-winning flagship studio show MLB Tonight.

Stark, who joined MLB Network in 2018, is the 2019 winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award for “meritorious contributions to baseball writing.” 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.

Before arriving at MLB Network and The Athletic, 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, SportsCenter and Outside the Lines and won an Emmy for his work on Baseball Tonight. He was also a regular guest on the Mike and Mike show, 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.

Stark is the author of 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, Stark was honored by Penn State’s Foster Conference for Distinguished Writers for his books and other work.

Throughout his 30+ years covering the sport, Stark has received many accolades. He is the 2019 winner of the BBWAA Career Excellence Award for which he was honored at the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was also a finalist for the 2019 National Sports Media Association’s National Sportswriter of the Year Award. Stark has been inducted into the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and is a 2x winner of the Pennsylvania Sportswriter of the Year award. In 2017, Topps issued an actual Jayson Stark baseball card.