By Don Leypoldt

During its Hall of Fame dinner on November 30th, the NECBL gave Phil Pepe an ironic honor.  The man chosen for one of two “Stand Up Guy” awards made his immense contributions to baseball and sports by sitting down.

Behind a typewriter.

A prolific author and sports writer, Pepe has written or co-written roughly 50 books on baseball.  Although retired as newspaper columnist, he continues to author prodigiously while still contributing a blog to the YES Network.

Much like the media hopefuls who intern with the NECBL, New York-native Pepe commenced his career while in college.  “Long before I started covering the Yankees, I was the editor of the St. John’s News,” said Pepe, who got to cover a Redman outfielder named Joe Consentino- the man who would eventually co-found the NECBL.  

“That gave me contact with the Sports Information Director.  One day, I got a telephone call from him,” Pepe continued, “saying that the World Telegram and Sun- which happened to be the newspaper my father brought home every night- was looking for a college student to work part time helping to cover high school sports.  I ended up getting that job and working part time while I was still in school.  When I graduated, I looked for a job. I asked them to hire me at the World Telegram but there were no openings.  So I made a decision.”

A New Yorker to the core, Pepe wanted to stay home despite the ultra-competitive media market.  He graduated from St. John’s and took a job with the NCAA statistics bureau in Long Island, giving himself one year to see if a sports writing position in the Metro New York area opened up.

“The year would have been up in June.  In April, someone left so my boss at the Telegram moved up and that created an opening for a high school sports editor which they gave to me,” Pepe described.  “That is how I started.  From there, I bounced to college sports and when the opportunity came and they knew I was interested in baseball, I got an opportunity- in 1961 of all years- to cover the Yankees.  I picked the team up on August the 2nd.”  

What a year.  Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle engaged the nation during their chase of Babe Ruth’s home run record.  1961 was the year legends would be made and debated.  It was the pivotal team in one of baseball’s most pivotal years, and Pepe now had a front row seat to everything.

“It wasn’t so much a media circus, because there weren’t the media hordes that there are today,” he remembered.  “I wound up later on covering a team that was owned by George Steinbrenner, managed by Billy Martin, and performed on the field by Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson.  THAT was a circus, the Bronx Zoo!  

“I guess, in retrospect, I was too young to appreciate the enormity of what was going on and it was quite a heavy burden put on me to cover this thing,” he admitted.  “I was instructed, every day, that I had to write about Maris and Mantle whether they hit three home runs or struck out four times.  And that is what I did.  It was a great experience.  Maris’ hair falling out (from the stress), the controversy with whether he deserved the asterisk, it was interesting but I didn’t appreciate what it was until years later when I looked back and said, ‘Wow!  That was amazing!’

The season started a nearly 50 year relationship with Pepe and the Yankees.  He eventually landed at the New York Daily News, where he worked as the Bronx Bombers’ beat writer from 1968 to 1984.

During that time, Pepe was able to build strong relationships, as evidenced by his collaboration with so many baseball luminaries.  He co-authored “My Favorite Summer: 1956” with Mickey Mantle, which reached #7 on the New York Times bestseller list.  A decade prior, Pepe co-authored “BillyBall”, the no-holds barred autobiography of Martin.

In between the two, Pepe worked with Yankee Hall of Fame lefty Whitey Ford to co-author “Slick”, Ford’s autobiography.  But Pepe has given a fair bit of attention to the Big League team in Queens, working with Bud Harrelson in co-writing his autobiography.  Before his tragic early passing, Pepe also worked with Hall of Fame Mets catcher Gary Carter in crafting the Kid’s “Still a Kid At Heart: My Life in Baseball and Beyond.”  

It is a fine line between the brutal honesty needed to be a competent reporter, and the ability to earn the trust of the subject, but Pepe walked it as well as anyone.  “To begin with, these books came after I left the newspaper.  There was no conflict in writing about these people and if I had still been with the newspaper, that would have been difficult,” he explained.  

“I also discovered very early in my book writing career that nobody wanted to read what I wrote but they were certainly interested in what Billy Martin had to say, or Yogi Berra had to say or Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle.  I decided that that would be a way of doing books.”  

He added, “The next big thing I learned is that I tried very hard to keep the flavor of their language.  Mickey Mantle spoke with an Oklahoman accent.  By using the recorder, being faithful to their language and the flavor of their dialect, that is the way to handle it, I believe.”

In 1989, Pepe was elected the chairman of the National Baseball Writers of America, the group responsible for Hall of Fame inductions.  He was the first New York writer, since newspaper icon Dick Young, to hold that post in 20 years.  

It is not fair to pigeon-hole Pepe as just a baseball writer.  He worked as the sports director for WCBS-FM radio for nearly 20 years, retiring from that position in 2001.  He is also a prolific boxing writer.  As late as last year, Pepe published an in-depth biography of heavyweight champion Joe Frazier.  

But baseball writing will forever be his calling card; even though Pepe has evolved as a writer over the last half-century, his original work has stood the test of time.  “For some reason, I was keeping a diary of everything that I wrote when I first started at the paper,” Pepe offered.  “I don’t save a lot, but I managed to save about six or seven of them  I recently wrote a book about the 1961 season and I happened to have the 1961 diary.   So I was stealing from myself and I was re-writing things that I had written that many years ago.  I like to think that I improved but I look back and say ‘That wasn’t bad!  That would stand up today.’”

1961 is just one of the flood of memories and experiences that Pepe was fortunate enough to cover.  “Roger Maris’ 61st home run has to be high on the list,” he relayed on his favorite moments.  “Reggie Jackson’s three home runs in the World Series is the greatest individual performance I have ever seen in the game.  So big that when it was all over, I asked him for a memento of it and he took his pants off and handed them to me! 

“I was between newspapers and I had just written a book with Bob Gibson, and was looking for a way to get to the 1968 World Series because I was no longer with a newspaper and my guy was pitching in the World Series,” Pepe continued.  “I managed to get five newspapers to get his coverage, ghost written by me.  I was there on Opening Day when he struck out 15 Tigers and I wrote the story and the Daily News played it on page one.  I felt like I set a World Series record that day!”

Pepe never pitched in the Majors, but there is no one else you would want describing a game.  If writers received Cy Youngs, Pepe no doubt would have an armful.  

Phil Pepe’s Advice to Writers:  “I am very much a stickler for good grammar.  I know that doesn’t help you be a good writer, but it’s like scratching a blackboard with your nail.  I pause when I see bad grammar and I think ‘How can he write that?’  The other thing, on the plus side, is be there.  Don’t try and write about something you didn’t witness.  I think you should go to a lot of events and be on the scene.  It’s amazing the stories that you uncover just because you happen to be there.  It may not be that the person you are going to write about is the star of that particular game but there may be some vignette or human interest aspect of what he has done that day that makes for an interesting story.  And, don’t hesitate to go to the loser’s locker room.  Sometimes the best stories come out of the losing locker room.”